


Come In From The Cold

by andthewasp



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Deaf Clint Barton, Fight Club AU, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, and taping it back together, attacking the mcu with a machete, character cameos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2019-11-28 10:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 38,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18207035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andthewasp/pseuds/andthewasp
Summary: Years ago, the United States government passed a law banning enhanced people, mutants, and superheroes, forcing them into prisons and graves.Newly reformed and no-longer brainwashed Bucky Barnes heads underground, into a fighting ring called The Avengers Initiative, and learns to make a living there using his specialized skills.Clint Barton isn't an enhanced person, per se, but hung up his bow and arrow for good with the passing of the accords. It’s only when his best friend introduces him to the world of The Avengers Initiative does he start to get sucked back in.





	1. Make Yourself at Home

**Author's Note:**

> i cranked most of this chapter out over one weekend and WOW it's starting to become a monster. it's already one of the longest things i've ever written and we're only on chapter one! i haven't written for the mcu fandom since, like, 2012, so please go easy on me with characterization and whatnot.
> 
> i owe a HUGE thank you to em, @spidergwenstefani, who listened to me ramble on about this fic and also beta'd!! they did a superb job at fixing my plentiful errors and were a huge source of motivation for this fic!!
> 
> there's currently set to be three chapters, and an epilogue. i am in college rn so i'm not totally sure when the next chapter will be up, because finals are starting to creep up on me. but i promise i'll be slaving away at it between exams and essays.
> 
> hope you enjoy!!

_“We are not special._

_We are not crap or trash, either._

_We just are._

_We just are, and what happens just happens.”_

—Chuck Palahniuk, _Fight Club_

 

Dodge. Dodge. Punch, miss. Dive, go for the legs. _Go for my legs_ , he said. Jump back up, punch when he isn’t expecting-

_Clang!_

Metal fist connects with shield. Backpedal, recalibrate. Push the shield away, kick at the chest. He throws the shield— _dumb move_ — catch it. Throw it, don’t bother looking as it cracks the closest wall and stays there.

Punch, punch, punch.

He goes down, does not get back up.

The lights go up, people cheering, some booing, but hardly audible over the clear and crisp announcement:

_“The Winter Soldier wins!”_

-

Clint doesn’t remember when the news broke.

Lots of people will tell you that they remember exactly where they were: drinking coffee on their balcony, listening to the radio. Or in the waiting room of a hospital, nervously watching the tv while their wife gives birth. A high school soccer game, where the announcer told everyone during halftime. Kate swears up and down that she heard it from a random twitter account before the story had even broke.

All Clint knows is that one day, enhanced individuals were outlawed, and he put he and Kate’s bows and arrows in the back of his closet, hidden behind boxes of Christmas decorations and clothes he refused to get rid of. It must’ve started as a normal day; put hearing aids in, drink an entire pot of coffee, take Lucky for a walk, go to the roof and shoot some arrows. Text Katie funny pictures of pigeons on the street and maybe call his therapist, if he’s feeling up to it. But by the end of the day, the world had practically ascended into chaos. People arrested, some killed in their homes, or in the street. Kate said that two kids at school were picked up and never seen again.

The accords, they’re called. Clint didn’t, and doesn’t, keep up with politics. But even he understands just what they meant. No mutants, enhanced persons, _superheroes_. At best, you’re put on a watchlist and have to swear to never use your powers. At worst, jailed or sentenced to death, if you’re considered especially dangerous.

And as for why these accords were introduced?

No one really knows.

But Clint often wonders.

~

“If you were really my friend you’d go with me,” Kate is saying. Clint is busy pretending he’s busy, the most of his torso hidden underneath his sink. It’s been leaking for months now. Today seemed like as good a day as any to fix it. She continues, “Darcy’s taken me a few times.”

“How did Darcy know how to get in?” The pipe is giving Clint just as hard of a time as Katie is. It won’t go any tighter, but maybe if he had a different tool…

“Someone she knows, knows someone, I guess. I don’t know.” He can practically hear the shrug and eye roll in her voice. “Can’t we just go together, this once? If you hate it you never have to go again.”

Clint hauls himself out from underneath the sink, starting to dig through drawers in pursuit of something he can better fix his sink with. He spares Kate a look, which is returned by an expression Clint can only describe as _cross_. “Why can’t you just go with your friends again if you’re so eager?”

The smile that Kate probably uses on her father to get more money is slapped onto her face. “Because you, Clint Barton, are my _best_ friend. The peanut butter to my jelly, the apple to my eye. The Romeo to my Juliet, but without the romance and the death-”

“I think I get your point.”

Kate circles around the counter that had been separating them and steps in front of him. “Come on, Clint. We have fun, they get paid. It’s a win-win for everyone.”

 _Sure,_ Clint thinks, _these people get the shit kicked outta them every night and we get to sit back and watch, hell of a lot of fun_. He buries his face into his hands and leans against the counter, momentarily forgetting about his shitty sink. “Fine.”

Kate thumps her fist gently against his face, nudging his hands away until they’re resting at his sides. The expression on her face is telling, her eyebrows raised and lips pressed firmly together. Clint can see his reflection in the purple sunglasses that sit on the top of her head, so he pushes them down and over her eyes. Her stony expression doesn’t falter, even as Clint feels Lucky forcing his way between their legs as if sensing trouble. Kate’s hand moves from his face to his bicep. “You worry me sometimes, Barton.”

Clint rolls his eyes and moves away, pulling a wrench out of the drawer he was digging through and getting back onto the floor, rubbing Lucky behind the ear as he makes his way back under the sink. “Changing the subject won’t get you anywhere.”

The last thing Clint sees of Kate before he’s back under the sink is her arms thrown up exasperatedly. “I’ll be back at ten, bring cash.”

He barely gets the word “okay” out before the sound of the front door opening and closing echoes through his apartment.

~

Once the accords were put in place, enhanced people were out of jobs and essentially forced into hiding, assuming you hadn’t been arrested or killed. Some went to trial, but they were fruitless efforts. You stopped seeing the announcements of verdicts, always _guilty_ , on the news after a couple months.

Around this time, a wise guy named Nick Fury had the brilliant idea to put these enhanced people to work, with the help of genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist Tony Stark, allowing them to use their powers, let off some steam, and get paid while they’re at it. This was the birth of an underground fighting ring called _The Avengers Initiative_ . Stark buys the building, and all surrounding ones, builds a pseudo-arena in the basement and keeps them out of the eye of the public. Fury finds the people; fighters and workers and people in police forces and governments with grey morals. Together they built what has essentially become an _empire_ , with fans and gamblers keeping the place in business.

Clint’s never been, but it’s been sitting in the back of his mind for months, ever since Kate first mentioned that she knew someone who knew someone who knows a place— whatever that really means. But now that he’s really _going_ , he realizes that he’s never really considered what it all meant. They’re betting on _real people_.

Kate tells him not to think too hard about it.

They enter a tall building, clearly abandoned with the windows boarded up, grimy furniture left behind to rot. It looks like it was once a hotel, with a front desk sitting in front of little compartments which may have once held room keys. A large mouse-bitten rug covers most of the floor, swirls of deep red and gold starting to fade as dust gathers. Directly across from the door is an elevator, covered in graffiti. As they get closer, Kate leading the way, Clint can get a better look at the actual art, things like a spray-painted red spider outlined by a circle, red and white _O_ ’s with a star in the middle like a target, a bright purple _A_ with an arrow through the middle, among others. Clint says nothing as Kate steps up to the elevator and holds down the up arrow.

A few moments pass, and nothing happens. Clint opens his mouth to say something like _seems like no one is home_ when there is a light-hearted _ping!_ and the elevator doors open to a high-tech, seemingly new elevator, the bright lights making Clint squint for a second. Kate steps in without a second thought, turning and crossing her arms, a smirk on her lips. “You coming or what?”

Clint promptly snaps his mouth shut, scrambling to get into the elevator before it closes.

The doors shut behind him, but it doesn’t move yet. On the wall are upwards of fifty buttons, all with various symbols and numbers that don’t appear to have any meaning.

To Kate they apparently do, reaching forward and pressing a series of buttons in a particular order, the buttons lighting up after each press. Clint counts thirteen buttons pressed when she finally stops, stepping back and standing next to him. He gives her a long look, only met with a half-hearted shrug as the elevator finally starts to move.

Clint stares at their reflections as the elevator descends. They tend to match, most of the time on _accident_ , and tonight is no exception. Their purples stand out in the stark grey elevator, like Kate’s headband and pants, or Clint’s shoes and hearing-aids. It had always been _their_ color.

His pointer finger twitches at his side. He balls his hand into a fist, trying to push that thought away. They know better.

The elevator stops, another lighthearted noise announcing their arrival. A few seconds pass and then the door opens, revealing them to the underground world of _The Avengers Initiative_.

The first thing Clint notices as they step out of the elevator is the giant hole in the floor.

It’s surrounded by bleachers filled with people, yelling at the fighters below. They’re too far away to be able to see down into the ring, but whatever is happening is clearly causing an upset. Clint takes a step forward to get a closer look but is stopped by Katie grabbing his arm. “Easy tiger, we gotta go over here first.”

They move towards a booth of sorts, where a man sits behind a counter covered in various papers and underneath a giant screen that almost resembles a chalkboard, titled “BETTING POOL”, listing names and figures in neat penmanship that Clint can’t make sense of. The man is busy counting something that Clint and Kate can’t see, and doesn’t look up when they approach. Behind him are several safes, whatever they’re holding is anybody’s guess.

“Hi,” Katie announces, slapping a hand onto the table, “We’d like two please.”

Two pamphlets are slid towards them. Clint takes the one Kate hands him, glancing down at it, then back at her. “What is this?”

Kate is too busy opening the trifold to answer. The cover reads _The Avengers Initiative_ in big font, followed by the same purple _A_ that is graffitied on the elevator. Clint cautiously opens it all the way, glancing between the new information that each page has to offer.

The first page appears to be a schedule of the night, starting with _Black Widow vs. Madame Mask_ and ending with _Thor vs The Hulk_ , listing fifteen fights in total. The middle is a description of the rules of the fights and how the betting works, and the third is the top ten fighters, reading:

  1. Winter Soldier
  2. Captain America
  3. Thor
  4. Scarlet Witch
  5. Captain Marvel
  6. Black Widow
  7. Miss America
  8. Ms. Marvel
  9. Quicksilver
  10. Black Panther



Clint reads through the rules a few times, glancing up at Kate every few seconds as she talks to the guy running the thing, counting her cash. The names are a bit ridiculous, he thinks, then remembers that he and Katie didn’t exactly have the best “code names” either. He flips to the back, frowning at the large black text.

**BURN WHEN DONE.**

Kate, pausing to turn and look at him expectantly. “You gonna bet anything?”

Clint glances at the list of names and the upcoming fights. _Winter Soldier vs. Captain America_ is set for tonight, the top two names on the leaderboard. “Sure,” Clint decides in a split second decision, “why not.”

He fills out a sheet of paper while Kate finishes hers, filling in the blanks, such as the date of the fight, how much he’s betting, his contact information. (Kate says this is so if any info leaks they know who was betting that night)

 _Who are you betting on?_ asks the paper. Clint writes, _The Winter Soldier._

“Good choice,” comments the man as he takes Clint’s papers and money, writing on something and putting the money somewhere they can’t see it. He does the same for Kate. “ _Safe_ choice.”

Clint wonders if that’s an insult.

They move away from the booth after that, towards the bleachers at last.

They’re not completely full, people scattered among the three structures, some in groups and some by themselves. They sit at the bottom of the second bleacher, directly across from the elevator they came from, able to overlook the fighting ring below without anyone blocking their view. The ring is about two stories below them, and there’s a huge gap between the ring and the walls. “They can expand the ring for bigger, more powerful fighters,” Kate explains, pointing to the empty space between the walls and the ring. “They don’t have too many, but if you get a fight like…” she glances at her pamphlet as she crosses one leg over the other, “Thor versus Hulk, they’re gonna need a big space.”

Clint nods, glancing over her shoulder at her open trifold. No one is fighting currently, and there was a fight that was going on when they came in. “How many d’ya think we’ve missed?”

“That upset we heard coming in was probably Scarlet Witch related. From what Darcy told me, magic users don’t get a lot of respect from the crowd. Well, _her_ type of magic, anyway. Telekinesis.”

“Ah.”

Kate nods, running her finger down the list. “Scarlet Witch versus Shocker is tricky because he would usually be a pretty good match for, like, Black Panther or someone, because they’re combat fighters. She can just pick you up and throw you somewhere.”

“There’s a reason she’s ranked number four.”

She throws her hands up. “I know right!”

Clint leans back and surveys the people around them, who are either talking amongst themselves, digging through their wallets, or furiously making notes in their pamphlets. “So, Katie-Kate, who’d you bet on?”

He almost misses it, as she covers her mouth with her hand. Kate is _blushing_. Clint stares at her, then prods at her shoulder. “What have you been hiding from me!”

Kate covers her face with her hands, uncrossing her legs and leaning on on his shoulder. “Miss America.”

“And?”

“She’s so fucking hot, Clint.”

The gears turn in Clint’s head. “Katie, you’ve only seen this girl _fight_ in a _fight club_.”

“She’s still hot!”

She’s about to say something else, but the lights dim and a voice cuts her off, loud and booming throughout the makeshift arena, but oddly robotic and calm, and British?

 _“Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. The eighth fight of the night is one of the most anticipated ones of the week, with our top two seeds, The Winter Soldier versus Captain America.”_ Two people enter the ring from the entrance, walking up the steps to the slightly elevated ring. One is clad in red, white, and blue, _Captain America_ , Clint thinks, and carrying a shield. The other, the Winter Soldier, is dressed head to toe in black except for his left arm, which is entirely silver, and his dark brown hair is long. It’s hard to make out any more features than that. _“As always, the rules of the ring are as follows: No leaving the ring, no guns or knives, and finally, the fight continues until one person says the codeword or is knocked unconscious.”_

Captain America and the Winter Soldier walk to opposite sides of the ring and step into what can best be described as a _battle stance_ , staring each other down. The Soldier’s left side is facing them, and only then does Clint realize that the silver is his _arm_.

 _“You may begin,”_ chimes the voice, followed by a buzzer sound, signalling the beginning of the fight. Immediately the two fighters are lunging at each other, Captain America punching with the shield, the Winter Soldier blocking with that metal arm, occasionally managing to get a punch or a dodge in.

People are yelling, no surprise there really, mostly encouragement to their preferred fighter or anger about a missed punch or failed dodge. The guy a few seats above them is up on his feet and gesturing wildly, screaming something about his kids’ lunch money and grandmas.

 _They’re nearly an even match for each other,_ Clint thinks as another punch is blocked. They carry on for a few minutes like this. It’s an entertaining fight, he must admit. Clint is nearly on the edge of his seat, and Kate is biting her thumbnail. The Winter Soldier dives to the side to avoid a shot with the shield, and punches, his metal fist colliding with the shield and producing a _clang!_ noise so loud that some people cover their ears. Clint is _deaf_ and he almost felt the reverb.

“Jesus,” Kate mutters. Clint is inclined to agree.

There’s some distance between them, now. Captain America throws the shield, _bad move_ , Clint thinks as the Soldier catches it and throws it, almost _recklessly_. It connects with the wall across from where Kate and Clint are sitting, and stays there, cracks webbing from the incision.

They’re at it hand-to-hand now, and it’s clear who’s winning. The audience grows even louder as the Soldier lays down relentless punches, to the stomach and to the face.

Clint’s stomach twists.

Captain America falls to the ground after one final punch, and does not get back up.

The lights go up, people cheering, some booing, so Clint can hardly hear the announcement:

_“The Winter Soldier wins!”_

-

“I told you to go for my legs,” Steve is saying.

Bucky wants to bash Steve’s face in for a second time that night. He won’t stop _talking,_ even after Dr. Cho asked him to while she gave him stitches on his lower lip. She pokes his forehead to shut him up again, gently applying some sort of ointment to his shoulder. Bucky’s already gotten the Doc’s five star treatment, now trying to fix one of the plates on his hand by himself. He’d rather not visit Stark this week, not after last time when he had all but removed the damn thing after an interesting fight with Scarlet Witch when she had fucked up all of his inner wirings.

“Too easy,” Bucky says around the flashlight he’s holding in his mouth, “if I wanted the fight to end in a minute and successfully _half_ our pay, _then_ I’d go for your legs.”

Cho gives Steve the go-ahead to jump off her table, moving back to her equipment and beginning to sterilize, getting ready for whoever will come after their fight next. He approaches Bucky, taking the flashlight from his mouth so he can dig into his hand with the screwdriver more easily. It doesn’t seem to be doing much. “Besides,” Bucky continues, refusing to look up at his best friend, who is surely smirking despite that fat lip, “maybe _you_ oughta learn not to throw that shield at me. You know what I’m gonna do with it.”

“Too easy,” is all Steve has to say on that particular matter.

They walk through the winding halls of the Facility together until they get to the locker room, where only Black Widow remains from the previous fights. A few others preparing for their upcoming fights linger. She greets them with just a raise of her eyebrows, likely because of the cut on her lip.

“We’re matching,” Steve fumbles. Bucky tries to hide his snort in the sound of the locker opening, but probably fails. The Widow doesn’t point it out, but Steve is already turning pink. Flirting has never been his forte.

“So we are,” she says. “How was the fight?”

“Good,” Bucky shrugs at the same time Steve says, “he won.”

“What about you?”

Black Widow waves a hand in a _so-so_ motion. “I won. I don’t think that Madame Mask will be around for much longer.”

“That was what, her third fight?”

“Something like that.” She stands and pulls on the sweatshirt that had been sitting on her lap, covering the bruises and cuts that are exposed in the tank-top. The hood covers her red hair, and her hands are shoved into the pockets. “See ya around, boys.”

Bucky waves without looking as Steve stammers his way through a goodbye.

“You gotta get better at that, man. It’s been years.” Bucky shrugs on a t-shirt, then a sweatshirt. He digs around in his backpack for a few seconds before he can find what he’s looking for, a glove that looks like a hand, nearly identical to his right one. You can’t tell its fake, unless you’re actively looking at it like it is. He slips it on as Steve sits down to start putting shoes on, wincing as it nudges the plate he just fixed.

“She’s just so…” Steve trails off.

The hand settles into place as he wiggles his fingers. “Yeah,” Bucky agrees. “She is.”

They say hello to a few others as they leave, to Ms. Marvel braiding Miss America’s hair, and to Thor swinging his hammer in the hallway, and to Bruce, carrying a huge stack of papers into Fury’s office.

Hugging each other tightly despite the injuries they themselves caused, they split and go down different hallways, towards different exits. Bucky knows Steve will go home and nurse his injuries some more and drink tea and maybe sketch something, whatever it is Steve does when Bucky isn’t around.

Bucky leaves and takes the long way home, down streets he doesn’t have to and on subways he wouldn’t normally, losing the tail he is always worried will some day follow him home. It’s unlikely, Stark and Fury have a pretty foolproof security system, but…

He locks the door behind him, and begins the long and complicated process of checking every door and window, all the light fixtures, underneath cushions and inside cupboards. He finally collapses onto his uncomfortable mattress and sleeps a light and unsound sleep, the sun only just beginning to rise.

~

If Bucky could go back and do one thing in his life differently, he never would’ve joined the army.

It was the catalyst for what would become his life. Join the army, get captured by some Nazis, pumped full of steroids, get rescued by your best friend, coincidentally also pumped full of steroids but by some secret branch of government rather than Nazis, join his band of merry men, fall off a train, become a brainwashed assassin with a metal arm, get saved by your best friend, again. All in the span of a few years.

Then the accords happened and SHIELD got shut down, leaving Bucky in a state of limbo.

James Buchanan Barnes was legally dead to most people. So Bucky holed up in a shitty apartment in Brooklyn, near where he and Steve grew up, with a fake name and a new backstory, effectively going under the radar of the government. Steve wasn’t so lucky, having been SHIELD’s golden boy for years before the accords. He was arrested but released soon after, having been deemed unlethal and his name added to the watchlist.

They managed fine by themselves for a few weeks. Bucky did things for money that he’s not exactly proud of, but that’s not new. Steve tried to remain God’s righteous man, attempting to speak out against the accords but just getting himself into more trouble.

And then Nicky Fury showed up at Bucky’s door.

No one except for Steve knew where Bucky lived— yet there he was, with his dumbass eye patch and a job offer.

So now Bucky and Steve get beat up four out of seven days of the week, earning barely enough money to cover the bills and working the only job that people of their kind could ever hope to get in this political climate.

Bucky’s had worse jobs, he supposes.

~

It’s a rough few weeks, after the fight with Steve.

The decline starts with a match against Quicksilver, who he barely beats, managing to trip him as he passes. Captain Marvel catches one of his punches and essentially melts the metal of his left arm, calling for the end of the fight and a trip to Stark’s workshop. Scarlet Witch destroys him in an embarrassing fight, twisting his arms until he can’t move and essentially forcing him to call uncle.

He doesn’t bother going to see Dr. Cho or Stark, grabbing his bag and leaving behind a confused Steve and Black Widow in the hallway.

The exit that leads to the alley behind the building is the one Bucky chooses that night, climbing up the ladder and exiting through a small panel in the floor, closing it behind him and walking onto the alley as if nothing is out of the ordinary.

He shoulder checks someone and winces as his left shoulder lets out a mechanical whine. The guy stops and turns to stare at him, frowning. “What was that?”

Bucky protectively holds his left arm against his chest, and clears his throat. “Bad cough.”

The guy steps forward. “That sounded like-”

Bucky turns and sprints in the other direction, not listening to whatever the guy is yelling after him, or looking back to see if anyone is following.

It’s nearly three am by the time he gets into his apartment, having crossed more streets than usual and ridden more buses and subways than he can count on both hands. A paper is taped to his front door, asking for rent ASAP. Crumpling it up in his hand, Bucky slips inside.

He locks his door with a shaking hand, his metal one still tucked close to his chest. The series of locks all click into place with a finalizing _snap_. Bucky leans against the door, allowing himself to loosen his shoulders and breathe for a moment. Maybe he overreacted— but getting arrested wouldn’t have been a good end to what has already been a shitty few weeks. He checks the windows and the cupboards like he usually does, and only then does he let himself completely calm down, collapsing onto the dingy old mattress that sits in the corner of the room. On the floor next to it is a record player and a cardboard box full of miscellaneous tools, which Bucky stares at, then reluctantly sits up. He puts a record on first, grabbing one from the stack at the foot of the bed at random, then sheds his shirt and sets to work at his arm.

The Andrews Sisters sing cheerily about a famous musician going to war. Bucky’s head already hurts from the Witch’s magic, but he rolls his eyes and almost makes it worse.

_“But then his number came up and he was gone with the draft, he's in the army now blowing reveille.”_

The music is turned up as loud as the old record player will go in an attempt to force Bucky to listen to it instead of his own thoughts, whether or not it really works is to be decided.

Bucky flips open a few panels on his bicep, shining a flashlight on the inner wires and craning his neck so he can get a good look inside. A few are disconnected and tangled, explaining the pain, but others are completely fried. Which means Bucky has to see Stark, _again_.

“Dammit,” he mutters, snapping the panel shut and tossing the flashlight and screwdriver back into the box. No other fighter saw Tony Stark as much as Bucky did— in the few years he’d been fighting, Bucky was getting tired of the guy.

The bathroom is the only part of the apartment that is in a seperate room from the rest, but is barely big enough to fit a shower, sink, and toilet. Bucky showers in the cold water, letting blood and grime wash away from his skin. With only one arm, the shower lasts longer than it needs to, but he relishes in it, for the time being.

The bed isn’t comfortable by any means, nothing more than a lumpy mattress with some threadbare blankets thrown on top, but to Bucky’s tired and worn body, it feels like the softest bed in the world.

-

There are three hundred and twenty-seven arrow holes in Clint’s apartment.

A hundred and two are in Clint’s bedroom, sixteen of _those_ are on the ceiling, seventy-five are in the kitchen, one hundred and thirty-nine are scattered around the living room walls, ten are in the various furniture around the house, and one is in the bathroom. (that one had been an accident)

None had been added to the collection since the accords broke the news.

Clint stands in front of his closet, hands on his hips. Lucky sits next to him, head cocked to the side and tongue hanging out, his tail thumping happily on the floor. Clint doesn’t dare open the closet, has barely touched it in years, but now feels strangely drawn to it. He’s been frequenting the _Facility_ , as Kate calls it, over the last few weeks. He doesn’t have a ton of money to gamble, but he’s fascinated by the process, and knows that it helps the fighters get paid. It’s a whole new world, seeing these people in action. Magic users, and super soldiers, and _demigods_. Kate’s still obsessed with that girl, bets all of her money away no matter the odds.

And of course, there’s the Winter Soldier.

Dressed in black, with that lethal silver arm. _He seems to be wearing thin,_ is what Kate had said, the more fights they watched of his. He went from the top seed to barely staying in the top ten, now ranked number nine.

The bow and arrow in the closet feel like they’re yelling his name. _Take us to the roof, Clint. No one can see you from up there._

Instead, he leaves his apartment and makes his way to the abandoned building by himself, punching in the code to the elevator and entering the code he now knows. He descends into the facility, his heart hammering loudly in his chest.

Coulson is running the info booth like he usually is, typing something on a laptop. There are a few people lined up, so Clint grabs a pamphlet and waits in the queue, scanning the lineups for the night.

The eighth fight of the night. _Iron Fist vs. Winter Soldier._

Clint steps up in front of Coulson when it’s his turn. He passes over the papers without a word, which Clint fills out quickly. He’s starting to have the pages memorized, able to fill them out without much thought.

 _Who are you betting on?_ asks the paper. Clint writes, _The Winter Soldier,_ and hands the paper back over to Coulson. His eyes skim it, then his eyebrows raise.

“That’s a lot of money. You’re betting on losing dogs, Barton.”

“Just take the damn money.”

Coulson does without another word, letting Clint walk to his normal spot on the bleachers.

There’s a fight already in progress. Black Widow has her thighs locked around Captain America’s head, and sends both them topping to the ground. The shield rolls sideways and lands a few feet away. Captain America shoves Black Widow off of him roughly, diving after the shield and attaching it to his arm, jumping towards the Widow once more to knock her down.

He misses, the shield cracking the floor of the ring. Black Widow kicks at Captain America’s legs, sending him to the floor on his back. She straddles his chest, lifting a fist to punch—

Something must happen, because her hand lowers and she crawls off him, that British voice coming over the speakers to announce:

_“The Black Widow wins!”_

She holds out a hand to help him up, which he accepts. The man next to Clint isn’t yelling very nice things, but Clint refrains himself from saying anything. The dude looks like he could hold his own in the ring.

Several fights go by after that, Clint unable to pay much attention to them, his mind elsewhere. Miss America wins her fight against Black Panther, Clint tells himself that he’ll have to tell Kate about it later.

Finally the voice announces that it’s time for Winter Soldier versus Iron Fist, the two fighters stepping out of the entryway and into the ring. The Soldier is dressed in his usual getup, all black with the arm exposed, while the Iron Fist stands out in greens and yellows. While the announcer drones through his usual speech, the Winter Soldier spins his metal arm to stretch it a few times, then flexes his metal fingers, as if unsure of himself.

There’s the buzzer, and the two men go for each other—

It’s a brutal loss, for the Winter Soldier.

Clint has to give him credit, the guy didn’t tap out even when people were yelling at him to. He goes down and stays down with a final glowing fist, hitting the ground with the painful sound of his metal arm hitting the floor.

_“The Iron Fist wins!”_

A few people come out of the doors as the Iron fist exits, laying the Soldier on a stretcher and exiting unceremoniously.

Clint stands just as the same guy says to his friend, “what a pussy. Can’t even handle _Iron Fist_.”

Turning away from him, Clint balls his hands into fists, the temptation to punch the guy getting stronger the more he hears. Still, he forces himself to step away, moving towards the elevator and waving at Coulson as he passes. He doesn’t get any response except for a look that feels something like _I told you so_.

Once on the ground floor, Clint glances around the sparse room. The fighters must exit from somewhere, right? Kate had mentioned that Stark owns this building and all surrounding ones…

The street outside is mostly empty, no one to watch as Clint slips into an alleyway next to one of the buildings. There isn’t much— a few trash cans, a pile of blankets and clothes that Clint figures is from a homeless person, and a doorway to the adjacent building. First Clint moves to the door, prodding it, then moving to the handle. It doesn’t budge.

No surprise there— Clint moves to the trash cans, lifting the lids and finding nothing but garbage, rotting food and wrappers and probably drugs, knowing New York. Nothing there.

He moves to the blankets, toeing them away with his foot to avoid touching them. Clint frowns, crouching down and running his fingers along the crack in the ground, a faint light coming from beneath the surface.

“What are you doing?”

Clint spins around, half expecting to see a police officer. Then he’d be really and truly _screwed_ . But it’s just a guy, with a grey sweatshirt and a backpack and long hair and _holy shit_.

It’s him.

Clint splutters, which seems to annoy the Winter Soldier. He takes a step forward, clearly threatening. Clint finally gets a good look at his face, which is battered and bruised from his fight twenty minutes previous. Stony grey-blue eyes, a cleft chin covered with stubble. Both cheekbones bruised, and a split lip. Clint witnessed the fight— it doesn’t take a genius to picture what the rest of his body must look like.

Thinking quickly, Clint throws his hands up in surrender. “It’s not what it looks like.”

The Soldier glances between Clint and the pile of dirty fabric behind him, unwavering.

“Okay, maybe it’s exactly what it looks like.” The Winter Soldier takes another step forward. “But I can explain!”

“You should probably start.” His voice is low and gravelly, but Clint wonders if that’s circumstantial.

Clint isn’t sure what to say for a moment. “I’m a big fan of your work,” is what comes out of his mouth when his mouth catches up with his brain. _Jesus Christ_ , Clint can practically hear Katie saying.

“You’re _what?_ ” The Soldier is suddenly in Clint’s space with his fist in his shirt, lifting Clint up until they’re nearly nose to nose, even though Clint is taller than the other man. Clint blinks rapidly, his hands going to the Soldier’s wrists. Right hand, he notes.

“I should’ve worded that differently,” he manages. “I’ve seen you fight. I’m into it.” Clint winces and wonders if he imagined the Soldier’s grip loosening. “I mean— I want to buy you a drink, or something.”

Jesus Christ, what is he doing? Kate’s gonna kill him.

Clint stumbles as the Winter Soldier drops him and steps back. He keeps talking, even as the Soldier walks to the edge of the alley and looks out, left and right, as if about to cross the street, but doesn’t leave yet. “I know that’s weird but…” _You fascinate me,_ is what he wants to say. Instead, he whispers, “you seem like you need one.”

The Soldier slowly turns back towards Clint, holding his gaze. Something passes between them, Clint can’t quite say what, but it breaks when the Soldier looks away again. “No,” he mutters, then repeats it again, louder. “No.”

Then, he steps into the street, leaving Clint in the dust, left to wonder what just happened.

-

Bucky thinks of the guy who confronted him in the alleyway three nights previous.

He thinks of his shaggy blonde hair, and the silly purple hearing-aids. The purple band-aid that was on his nose, and the feeling of his hands on Bucky’s arm as he said _I’m into it_.

Bucky lands another punch to Drax’s face, but is roughly shoved to the ground again. The shouting of the crowd rings loudly in Bucky’s ears as Drax kicks his stomach. And then the man’s voice again, offering to buy him a drink. He forces himself up, can feel the metal creak of his arm throughout his body, and grabs at Drax’s body, slamming his head down onto his knee. Drax’s body crashes to the ground, as Bucky’s had done just seconds ago.

The man in the alley’s face sticks in Bucky’s mind as he punches one last time, and stays there as JARVIS announces:

_“The Winter Soldier wins!”_

Remorsefully, Bucky thinks it feels good to win again.

~

It doesn’t surprise Bucky when he goes back to that alley and find the man crouched over one of the facility exits. He’s feeling better than he has in weeks, even fresh out of a brutal fight. He needed the win, and the cash.

“Thats a bad idea,” calls Bucky, causing the man to spin around and stand abruptly. He’s disheveled, his blonde hair flying in every direction and shirt wrinkled. “It can only be exited from. Try to enter and you’ll get yourself killed.”

The guy’s eyes flick around Bucky’s person, from his hood, to his hands, to the backpack, and to his face again. “Noted,” he says cautiously.

Bucky shifts from foot to foot, and sniffs awkwardly. “I’ll take you up on that drink.”

-

The Winter Soldier is… odd.

He nurses cheap whiskey, and his eyes are constantly moving, sweeping around the bar, constantly on guard. His left hand, the one that Clint knows is metal but is currently masked with a glove that resembles a flesh hand, taps nervously on the table.

Clint stares at him, studying his features and trying to get a read on him. Tonight he sports a black eye with a heavy gash over the eyebrow, clean and stitched up already. The bruise from a few nights ago is almost faded on his cheekbone, and the gash that was on his lip is scabbed over. Every second that passes Clint thinks of another question— but keeps his mouth shut. He’s finally got the guy here, he doesn’t want to fuck it up.

Finally, half way through his own drink, he says, “I’m Clint Barton.”

The Soldier’s blank expression does not falter, but his eyes stop their sweep and land on Clint.

When he doesn’t say anything, Clint clears his throat. “This is when you tell me _your_ name.”

The Soldier snorts as he lifts his drink to his mouth. There is a ghost of a smile on his features, and Clint realizes that he is _handsome_. The thought is gone before Clint can really focus on it, because the Soldier is talking.

“Not many people know my real name.”

“Awfully cryptic of you.”

He huffs something out that sounds close to a laugh, and moves to stand. “Thanks for the drink, but you’re going to have to try harder than that.”

“Wait!” Clint all but yells. The Soldier looks at him, tilting his head slightly. “Come on, man. I’ll do all the talking, how about that? I have nothing better to do.” The _I’m sure you don’t, either_ is left unsaid.

The Soldier sits back down, raising his eyebrows and leaning back in his seat.

Clint takes that as the go ahead, and launches into the story of when he picked up Kate from school a few years ago and they ended up on a roadtrip to Orlando, Florida.

“You’re friends with a high schooler?”

“I _used_ to be friends with a high schooler. Now she’s in college.” Clint wrinkles his nose. “Or so she claims.”

“How did that happen?”

Clint often wonders the same thing: how did he and Kate become friends? She was sixteen and good with a bow and arrow, Clint’s brother had just died and he was _great_ with a bow and arrow. He had been in a bad place, Katie had been in a bad place, _high school_. They had just seemed to fit. The two of them and Lucky were their own little family.

“I crashed into her living room.” The sound of the Soldier putting his glass on the table signifies his surprise. “It’s kind of a long story.”

The story of running away from the mafia that killed your brother is a third or fourth date kind of story, anyway. It ends like how most of Clint’s stories end, with Kate saving his ass. The Soldier didn’t need to know that quite yet.

The front door of the bar opens and closes. Clint hears it rather than sees it, but the Winter Soldier tenses up, removing his arms from the table and shoving them into the pockets of his sweatshirt, forcing his shoulders down in a way that doesn’t look incredibly inconspicuous. Clint glances over his shoulder at whoever just walked in.

A police officer is moving to sit at the bar, holding a hand up to signal the bartender. Clint glances back to the Soldier, who looks two seconds from bolting out the door.

“Hey, my apartment isn’t too far from here.”

The Soldier is up and moving towards the door, apparently not needing any more convincing. Clint scrambles after him, leaving some bills on the table. The Soldier pushes the door open, Clint close behind him, sparing a glance at the cop. He’s watching them, but it’s not the kind of _I know you’re secretly enhanced persons_ look, it’s more like, _I sure hope these drunk idiots don’t become a problem._ At least, Clint thinks it is. He’s never liked cops.

~

“Make yourself at home,” Clint announces. Lucky is happy to see them, his tongue rolling out of his mouth. The Soldier slips in and snaps the door shut quickly, as if afraid that the police officer had followed them to Bed Stuy and would be able to sneak in through the crack of the door. Lucky noses at the Soldier’s left hand.

“You didn’t mention a dog,” he says, pulling his hand away protectively, but allowing his right one to gently scratch Lucky behind the ear.

Clint shoves his shoes off and moves to the kitchen, putting on a pot of coffee. “What, you allergic?”

The Soldier follows, notably not removing his shoes (rude), trailed by Lucky. “No.” He glances around the kitchen, at the seventy-five arrow holes, frowning.

“Arrows,” explains Clint, hopping up onto the counter. He watches the Soldier poke at the holes with an odd feeling settling in his stomach.

“Arrows?”

Humming, Clint looks at the contents of the kitchen counter. He spots a bottle, grabs the cap, contemplates his surroundings for a moment, then flicks it. It bounces off the bubbling coffee pot, the fridge, and into the trash. The Soldier’s eyebrows shoot up in question. Clint shrugs. “Just can’t seem to miss.”

The Soldier leans back. “You’re enhanced?”

Clint waves his hand in a _so-so_ gesture. “I’m deaf,” he taps his hearing-aids, “working theory is that my senses are heightened. But I like to think that I’m just really cool.” Kate’s aim is just as good as his and _she’s_ not deaf.

“And that explains the arrow holes how?”

“Bow and arrow is kinda my thing. _Was_ my thing.” Clint winces. “I’m not on an enhanced list, but…”

The Soldier sits down at the kitchen table, his shoulders loosening. “Better safe than sorry.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “I don’t know if you can even call a deaf guy with a penchant for pointy sticks enhanced, but me and my sidekick hung up our bows for good when the accords happened anyway.”

“Sidekick?” The Soldier asks, the barest hint of a smirk in his voice. The corner of his mouth is slightly upturned, Clint notices. “You seem more like the sidekick-type than this Kate.”

Rolling his eyes, Clint hops off the counter to pour them two mugs of coffee. “Partners in heroism, whatever you want to call us.”

Two steaming cups of coffee are placed on the table. The Soldier drinks his quickly, while Clint nurses his own.

“So,” Clint starts after a few minutes of silence and coffee drinking, “if I can’t ask for your name, can I ask for your phone number?”

“Real smooth, Barton.”

Clint stands and digs through one of the drawers, pulling out a pen and notepad.

To his surprise, the Soldier takes it, and slides the notepad towards himself, looking contemplative. A brief moment passes, followed by the faint sound of pen on paper. “I don’t have a cell,” the Soldier explains, “so you’ll just have to stick with calling the landline that came with the apartment.”

Clint is tempted to make a joke about this being the 21st century, but refrains, just watches the Soldier’s neat numbers as they appear on the page.

The Soldier stands after leaving his final mark on the page. “Thanks for the drinks, Barton. And for paying me.”

Following him to the entryway, Clint watches the Soldier crouch and pet Lucky a few more times. “No problem man.” After a second, Clint adds, “I promise to call.”

The Soldier opens the door and looks at Clint with soft eyes. “Don’t bother,” he says, but it lacks venom, and comes across as a _joke_ more than anything, promptly shutting the door.

When he returns to the kitchen, Clint picks up the notebook, running his fingers over the numbers, and the letters underneath them. _My friends call me Bucky,_ is written in the neat handwriting.

Bucky.

Before he goes to bed that night, Clint programs the number into his phone under that name, and burns the trifold that had been folded and stuffed in his back pocket. He crawls into bed, running the events of the night through his mind. As he falls asleep, Lucky at his feet, Clint makes a mental note to call Kate in the morning. She’s going to hit him so hard.

-

Bucky feels like he’s about to fall over.

Tony Stark has him propped up on a table, left arm supported by some sort of stirrup, keeping it in place while Stark delicately takes it apart. Every panel is open, exposing the skeletal wires and inner workings. Bucky averts his eyes, not comforted by the fact that his left arm can so easily be taken apart and put back together again.

“This is what, the fourth time you’ve broken the thing this month?”

“ _I_ didn’t break it.” Bucky shrugs his right shoulder, closing his eyes and trying to force the incoming headache away.

“Coulda fooled me,” remarks Stark, pulling out what looks like a fried microchip, connected to a coil of tangled wires. “How does this even happen?”

The fingers of the arm twitch violently as Stark disconnects the chip, letting out one sad whine before the arm totally loses power. Bucky can feel the weight sagging and pulling down the left side of his body. If he wasn’t already close to exhaustion, working to keep himself straight is going to become a chore. “Ask Thor,” he groans, digging his right hand into the edge of the table. “There isn’t a better way you can do this?”

“Unfortunately not. _You_ ask Thor to stop frying all your systems.”

Bucky winces as he remembers the fight that occurred an hour ago. He won, of course, he was finally starting to get his mojo back, but his arm suffered a fatal thunderous blow, barely able to wiggle the fingers. So here Bucky sat, in the company of Tony Stark, for the last thirty minutes. His whole body was tingling from the lightning, and a cut that had only just begun to heal had been reopened on the side of his face.

Stark glances between whatever he’s doing and Bucky’s face. “You want someone to fix that?”

“No.”

He shrugs, going back to the arm. “Your loss.”

Bucky just closes his eyes and tries not to pass out, listening to the whirring of Stark’s machines and his occasional mumbling to himself. An indefinite amount of time passes until the door whirs open, making Bucky snap his eyes open. Stark is still sitting next to him, but now wears a mask over his face while he blow-torches something. Bucky tries to wiggle his fingers, feels nothing. So they’re not done yet.

Steve approaches, glancing between Stark and Bucky and Bucky’s arm, raising an eyebrow.

“Thor,” is all he can say. Stark flips his mask up and leans back, looking at him.

“He awakens!”

Ignoring him, Steve leans against a table nearby. There’s a freshly sewn gash that extends from the center of his forehead, moves over his eyebrow, and disappears into his hairline. Bucky reaches over to touch the dried blood where the cut stops. “Black Panther?”

Steve shrugs. “He’s got some mean claws.”

Bucky is well aware of how those claws feel on skin. He drops his hand back to the table, looking over at Stark. “How much longer?”

“Depends on if this works.” Stark lifts the chip that he had been working on with a pair of tweezers. “Hey, Cap, where’s the Widow? Aren’t you usually on her tail?”

The look on Steve’s face is funny enough to make Bucky huff a soft laugh. Stark isn’t exactly wrong— Steve’s been smitten with the woman since she first joined the Initiative. If he’s not with Bucky, he’s probably hanging around Black Widow. Their last fight ended with Steve tapping out and letting her win. Bucky can’t imagine she took that too well.

Steve chooses to ignore Stark’s comment. “How are you, Buck?”

“Peachy.” Stark places the new and improves chip wherever it’s supposed to go. It feels like a needle is poked into Bucky’s nonexistent skin, causing him to grit his teeth and inhale sharply. “Never been better.”

A hand is placed on Bucky’s right shoulder, a steadying force.

Stark finishes up, placing wires where they need to be and chips back into their panels. Bucky regains feeling in the arm slowly, like cold water trickling up the fingers, through the faux veins, and into the bicep until it feels like it’s a part of Bucky again. He can flex the fingers, and move the wrist, lift the arm out of the stirrup and stretch it, just as he had been able to do before Thor wrecked it. “Thanks, Stark,” Bucky says, as genuinely as he can as he jumps off the table.

He has already flipped the mask back down and has moved on to a different project, waving a hand absently. “Just tell Point-Break to be careful with my things, next time.”

When Bucky gets home nearly two hours later, his wallet barely any more full than it had been when he walked into the facility earlier in the night, he goes immediately to the phone on the wall after locking the door, instead of to the windows and cupboards like he usually would. Clint has left two more messages since Bucky checked that morning.

He holds the phone to his ear with his newly fixed hand, closing his eyes as he listens to the message.

 _“Hey, Bucky, it’s Clint. You probably knew that already. I just got home from lunch with Katie. She’s good, thank you for asking.”_ Bucky laughs. _“I’ll tell her you say hello. I took Lucky to a dog park today but he refused to play with any of the other dogs, just laid at my feet and slept. Dumb dog, probably dreaming of pizza. It made me feel nice, though. Apparently he prefers my company to other dogs. What does that say about me? Anyway, I’m planning on going tonight. Just thought you’d like to know. Call me back whenever you feel like it— or not, if. You know. You don’t.”_

The second one is shorter, and probably left not too long ago.

 _“Good job, tonight. Hope you get that checked out.”_ It takes Bucky a moment to realize that Clint is referencing the arm. _“You should take a break. Seems like you need it.”_ There’s a pause so long that Bucky wonders if something is wrong with his phone. Then, Clint continues, _“I’ll call you tomorrow. And the day after that. You can’t ignore me forever.”_ The line clicks when he hangs up.

Bucky doesn’t really know why he hasn’t called Clint back. Clint clearly seems interested in him. Every night he promises himself that he’ll call back, but he never does.

Pulling the phone away from his ear, Bucky realizes that half of it is covered in blood from the side of his face. “Shit,” he mutters, dropping it and letting it hang on the line. Bucky wanders to the bathroom to clean himself up, telling himself that he’ll call Clint back. As soon as he’s clean. Maybe.

-

Kate throws herself through the door, scaring Lucky out of the room and Clint off the couch he was peacefully asleep on.

He doesn’t have his hearing-aids in, but the sound of the door hitting the wall was just loud enough to startle him. Kate hovers over his body, saying something he can’t make out.

“I can’t hear you,” he says, groaning as he hauls himself from the floor back onto the couch. He keeps his eyes on her, even as she rolls her eyes and signs, _get your aids then, this is too important._

Clint sighs. He forces his body off of the couch and into the bedroom, grabbing the hearing aids from the nightstand, putting them in his ears and turning them on. He walks back into the living area where Kate is now sitting on the couch with Lucky on the couch and half in her lap. “What could possibly be so important?” He glances at the time on his phone. “Don’t you have class?”

She waves a hand. “Not important.” Clint sits on the other side of the couch as Kate continues, “The Winter Soldier and Miss America are fighting tonight.”

Clint raises his eyebrows. “How do you know that?”

“Darcy told me.”

“How does _Darcy_ know that?”

“Do you ever listen to me? Darcy has a friend who knows a fighter.” Kate kicks her feet up on the coffee table an throws her arms out. “We’re going tonight.”

Kate has been oddly fixated on Bucky ever since Clint told her about the evening they spent together. He left out most of the details, like his name and fascinating mannerisms. She had her crush on Miss America, too, and was adamant that Clint could hook them up somehow. Clint hasn’t even been able to talk to _Bucky_ since that night. Still, Clint had promised that some day he’d mention it, just to make her feel better. He already talks endlessly about Katie in the messages he leaves. He would never tell her that, though.

She nudges his foot with her own. “My girl’s gonna destroy your guy.” She wiggles her eyebrows.

“Not a chance,” Clint says, his lips spreading into a smile and then a laugh. Kate laughs too, one of her hands falling on top of Lucky’s head and the other on Clint’s shoulder, a steadying force that reminds Clint why he loves her so much.

~

They place their bets with Coulson and make it into their seats just as the usual announcement is starting.

Bucky and Miss America walk out and go to opposite ends to the ring, which is pretty standard. Kate cheers as America steps to their side, Bucky across from her. The rules are announced, the buzzer plays, and the fighters go straight for each other.

Miss America hits the ground first, Bucky landing a solid push at her chest. She takes advantage of being on the ground to grab at Bucky’s legs, sending him toppling after her. His left hand grabs for her wrist but she gets to him first, grabbing ahold of it and twisting it behind his back.

America’s advantage doesn’t last too long as Bucky throws his head back, knocking their skulls together and pushing himself free from her grasp. He throws a punch that hits Miss America in the chin.

“Here we go,” mutters Kate from beside Clint, leaning forward in her seat.

Miss America gets some punches in as well, literal stars flying, like sparks from metal, as they connect with Bucky’s head and stomach. A glowing white star starts to appear around America’s head, resembling a halo. Clint’s seen the girl fight enough to know what’s about to happen.

Just as it seems like America’s going to deal the final blow of the fight with her star-power, Bucky grabs her roughly by the hair, the star fading away instantaneously as she hits the ground. Kate yells something, as do a number of other people in the crowd. Bucky plants his knee to her chest and punches straight across the face, lifting his fist once more, but going no further when America finally taps out.

“Dammit!” Kate shouts, shoving Clint’s shoulder.

 _“The Winter Soldier wins!”_ announces the voice as Bucky extends a hand to help the girl up, which she accepts. It’s a little hard to see from so far away, but Clint thinks they’re both smiling, despite the blood running down their faces.

“I told you,” Clint boasts, smiling from ear to ear. Kate shoves him again.

~

Kate passes out on Clint’s bed when they get back to his apartment, Lucky following suit. Clint stays up, not tired yet because of his nap from earlier, staring at his phone.

Is he going crazy? He feels like he’s going crazy.

The phone rings five times, as per usual, before the automated voice tells Clint that he can leave a message after the tone.

He’s quiet for a moment, trying to decide what to say, then, “I sure hope you’re actually listening to these. Kate would be so disappointed to find out you haven’t _really_ been saying hi.” Clint taps his hand absently on the table, thinking about how Bucky does that, too. “Maybe I’d be a little disappointed, too. We came and visited you at work. Oh, Kate really likes your coworker, is there any way we— _you_ , could get her number, or something? She’s been bugging me about it but I didn’t want to bother you— although I guess I should’ve thought about that before I started leaving you multiple voicemails a day.”

Clint leans back in his chair, staring at the few arrow holes above the fridge, forming a perfect circle. “I wish I could get back to work,” he mutters. “I miss it so much. Kate is always saying that we could but— it scares me. You know that.”

Clearing his throat, Clint continues, “anyway. You should call me back. Sometime. I’ll make you more horrible coffee and you can pet my dog some more. And meet Katie, you’d like her, I think. She’s a bitch and I like her so much. Okay. I’ll let you go now. Goodnight.”

When he finally crawls into bed next to Kate, she mutters, “you make me depressed.”

Clint huffs a laugh, taking out his hearing-aids and pulling the covers up and over the head. If she says anything else, he doesn’t hear.

~

The only reason Clint realizes his phone is ringing is Lucky nudging him in the face, his wet nose prodding Clint’s eye. He groans, rolling onto his side, pausing when he sees the light on his phone flashing. It’s still dark in the room, no sunlight pouring through the curtains or annoying birds outside. Sighing, Clint grabs his hearing aids and picks up the phone. “This better be good, Katie.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” says a man’s voice.

Clint sits up so fast his head spins. “Bucky?” Lucky looks at him quizzically. “Took you long enough, asshole.”

Bucky’s end of the call is staticy and hard to hear, but Clint can barely make out, “sorry. Can I come over to your apartment?”

Something is up. “What’s wrong?” Clint asks, throwing his legs over the side of the bed and standing up. The hardwood floor is cold against his bare feet as he leaves his room and goes to the kitchen, Lucky following close behind.

“I’ll explain later. Can I come or not?”

“Yes, yes of course you can.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything else, just hangs up. Clint stops in his tracks, staring at the screen. The number Bucky just called from wasn’t his home one, which Clint has programmed into his phone. Lucky whines at his feet, looking up at Clint with his one eye like he’s pissed they’re not in bed.

“Me too, bud,” Clint mutters, patting the dog affectionately on the head and continuing into the kitchen.

Clint has barely turned on the coffee pot when there’s a knock at the door. Looking through the peephole shows that it’s Bucky, standing stock still.

“You look like shit,” says Clint as he opens the door. Bucky pushes himself between Clint and the door, shutting and locking it himself. Clint takes a long stride back, looking his new visitor up and down. He’s wearing the same thing he wore the two times Clint has seen him outside of the ring, a baggy grey sweatshirt, worn black jeans, a backpack, and that fake hand. His face and hair is bloody, clearly fresh from a fight.

Bucky turns and looks Clint up and down, humming. Clint blinks, looking down at himself in his purple pajama pants and white t-shirt. “I have… coffee,” he mutters, making his escape to the kitchen.

It takes a few minutes for Bucky to make his way into the kitchen after Clint, apparently wandering the apartment. Clint hardly notices him when he does, turning and nearly dropping the coffee pot to find him sitting at the table. He’s washed the blood off his face, and is digging through a first-aid kit with his right hand. “You know how to sneak up on people,” Clint comments, sitting down and pouring two mugs of coffee. Bucky has discarded the fake hand and shrugged off the sweatshirt, leaving him shirtless in Clint’s kitchen.

“Don’t you guys have an infirmary, or something?” Clint asks, gesturing vaguely to Bucky. He’s covered in bruises and scars and cuts, especially around his arm, where the scar tissue is thick and red, extending from his shoulder across his pec.

Bucky pushes the kit away from himself, exhaling through his nose and speaking up for the first time. “We have a doctor. And a glorified mechanic. Speaking of which,” he holds up his left arm. “You wouldn’t happen to know how to fix a cybernetic arm, would you?”

“Unfortunately no.”

Wrinkling his nose, Bucky flips open a panel on his wrist and digs around in it. “My  hand isn’t working, but luckily I can move the arm.” He rubs the stubble around his mouth with his right hand, closing his eyes. “The mechanic, Tony, he’s not in New York for a little while.”

“So he can’t fix it.”

“No,” Bucky confirms. He opens his eyes, looking at Clint for a moment, then flipping the panel closed. He takes a long drink of his coffee before saying anything else. “I won’t be able to fight until he can get back.”

Clint mulls this information over, running his finger around the rim of the steaming mug. “No fighting, no money.”

Nodding, his gaze far away, Bucky purses his lips and doesn’t say anything.

He doesn’t know much about Bucky’s personal life, but Clint can imagine. He moves closer, scooching his chair until they’re practically side by side, their knees brushing. Clint grabs the first-aid kit, pulling out the disinfecting wipes and opening the package. Bucky doesn’t say anything as Clint brushes it across his face, over the cut on the cheek, and the one on the eyebrow, on the hairline, and so on. His right eye is black and almost swelling, both eyes closing when Clint gently runs his finger over the bruise.

“I’m no doctor,” Clint whispers.

“Doesn’t matter,” Bucky breathes.

The cuts are bandaged with whatever Clint has in the first-aid kit, including a purple band-aid over the eyebrow.

“We match,” Clint teases, gesturing to the various purple bandages covering his arms and fingers.

Bucky looks at them, raising his eyebrows in a fond expression. “What’s with you and purple?”

The best thing Clint can do is shrug. “It’s just always been… our thing. Kate and I.” He rubs awkwardly at his face. “It’s a little leftover. From before.”

They sit in silence, after that, drinking their coffee and sneaking glances at each other.

“You know,” Clint finally says. "You can stay here.” Bucky stares at him, his face blank. Quickly, Clint adds, “just for a few days. If you need it—”

“No, I. Thank you, Clint.” Bucky sniffs, looking down awkwardly. “Steve offered, too, but I. He can’t be keeping me at his place.”

Clint doesn’t ask who Steve is, or what the situation is there, but can feel the sincerity in his voice. “As long as you need it,” he says softly. “Seriously.”

A soft smile sits on Bucky’s face, the corners of his mouth slightly turned up. Clint is reminded again how handsome he is, his long hair hanging around his face and his stubble accenting his chin. When he isn’t frowning or keeping his expression blank, Clint would go as far as to say _beautiful_. He can’t even imagine Bucky unscarred and bruised, or what he looks like under all the wounds.

Lucky breaks the moment, nudging Bucky with his nose and barking.

Bucky looks down at him, raising his brows. His voice gets higher when he talks to lucky, saying, “hello again.”

“His name is Lucky.” Clint leans his hand on his fist, watching them. “He likes you.”

Bucky runs his hand along Lucky’s head, scratching behind his ears and at his nape. “I bet he likes most people.”

“Maybe. But that’s kind of what dogs are for.” Lucky tips his head back and looks at Clint, his tongue rolling out the side of his mouth in a goofy grin. “Yeah, you know we’re talking about you.”

More silence passes as Clint stands, putting their now empty mugs in the sink. “You can have the bed.” Bucky starts to argue, but Clint cuts him off, “at least for tonight. Rest those bones.”

He accepts reluctantly, letting Clint lead him to the bedroom. “I listened to all your messages, you know.”

Clint tries to hide whatever emotion is boiling in his stomach at that moment, pushing the door to his bedroom open. “Really?” he asks, feeling like his voice has gone up a few octaves.

Bucky seems to take in the sight of the bedroom, disheveled sheets and rumpled clothes on the floor. Lucky has followed them and has already jumped back up into his spot on the bed. “Yes. They were.. A nice thing to come home to.” Bucky shrugs his sweatshirt back on, sitting on the edge of the bed and leaving Clint standing in the doorway. “Your coffee isn’t shitty.”

That wasn’t what Clint was expecting— but takes it anyway. “Thanks.” He turns to go, then, “oh, by the way. That girl you fought—”

Maybe Clint’s imagining it, but it looks like Bucky is smiling. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Something boils over, a sudden rush of emotions. He covers it by letting out a low, quiet, “goodnight, Bucky,” and shutting the door.

-

Soft sheets, warm blankets. There’s a long, blissful moment where Bucky doesn’t realize where he is, just keeps his eyes closed and his breathing slow and deep, embracing the warmth and the sunlight on his skin. It doesn’t last long, the unfamiliar feelings settling in his skin soon after waking.

He sits up quickly, blinking hard and fast as his body shifts into defense mode, analyzing his surroundings. Clothes that aren’t his own on the floor, a window letting in sunlight across the bed, holes in the walls, a nightstand covered in sticky notes, wrappers, and plastic bottles, and a yellow dog at his feet.

Right. He’s at Clint’s.

Upon closer inspection, the sticky notes are all from Kate, all addressed to Clint, saying things like _“took lucky for a walk before i left, dont forget to text me when you wake up”_ and _“get new batteries for hearing aids”_ . There are hundreds of them all over the table and on the wall above it and in the drawer. Some are simple, just some numbers and dates, while others take up four notes attached to each other. All signed _xoxo Kate_.

It’s cute.

Clint isn’t on the couch when Bucky exits the bedroom, or in the kitchen or bathroom. In fact, A sticky note is left on the fridge that wasn’t there the previous night.

_Bucky—_

_Will be back soon_

_Kate will come to take Lucky out at some point, because I have no idea what you get up to while the sun is up_

_Be good_

_Clint_

His handwriting is small and curly, the letters pushed tightly together like they might fall off the page. Bucky takes the note and sticks it into his sweatshirt pocket, moving away from the kitchen to wander around the rest of the apartment. It’s different in the sunlight, from when Bucky had arrived last night and had checked all the windows and doors while Clint was making coffee. There’s a pizza box on the coffee table, and a crack running through a tv screen. Dog food bowl on the floor next to a leash. Two toothbrushes on the sink next to an empty orange pill bottle. The whole apartment is _quaint_ , Bucky decides, noting the blankets thrown everywhere and the silly mugs in the cupboards and some pictures on the walls or on tables. Photos of Clint and a dark haired girl who must be Kate, or of the two of them and Lucky. There’s one of Clint and a man that somehow looks more put together when side by side with Clint, his auburn hair hanging over his forehead and his green suit ill-fitting. _They must be related_ , Bucky thinks, looking between their scruffy square jaws and the way their matching crooked smiles don’t really meet their eyes.

Bucky sets the photo back down on the windowsill, looking down at Lucky from where he has emerged from the bedroom. He stretches, the front of his body getting close to the floor and his tail up in the air, then straightens and looks at Bucky. “Good morning,” Bucky says to him, even though it’s more likely well into the afternoon. He doesn’t usually sleep this late, especially not in a place he’s unfamiliar with, but maybe being in an actual, comfortable bed for once forced his body to succumb to sleep. It also helps that Clint, apparently a retired superhero, was asleep just outside the door. A deaf, clumsy superhero who only uses bows and arrows, but a superhero nonetheless.

Lucky jumps up onto the couch and goes right back to sleep, apparently content to wait for Kate to arrive.

The thought of Kate reminds him of Steve— he should probably go to his apartment. Brooklyn Heights isn’t too far away from Bed Stuy. He could catch the C train.

That’s the plan Bucky comes up with, heading to the bedroom to grab his things, shrugging on his shoes and jeans, followed by the stiff fake hand over the fingers that don’t work. It’s uncomfortable, feels like something is freezing his fingers in place while also wrapping them in a hundred layers of saran-wrap. He can hardly use the hand with the glove when his fingers are _working_ , but now that they’re not it looks even faker than usual.

He keeps his hands tucked in his pocket as he walks to the subway and all the way to Steve’s apartment building, until he is knocking on the door. He knocks rhymically; three knocks, a pause, one knock, pause, then two more.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says as he opens the door not long after Bucky knocks. “Did you—”

“Yes,” Bucky cuts him off, shutting the door behind himself and pulling the hand off, immediately breathing a sigh of relief. “I stayed there last night.” He doesn’t have to look at Steve to know what his face looks like, his eyebrows raised high and his jaw loose in a smirk. “Don’t even start with me.” Bucky holds up a hand as he moves up the stairs to Steve’s kitchen.

“I didn’t even say anything.”

“Your silence speaks a thousand words.” Bucky tells him, opening the fridge and grabbing his orange juice, pulling off the cap and drinking straight from the jug.

“Why’d you come here instead of hanging around your new bff’s house then?” Steve grabs the juice from him. “He doesn’t have juice you can steal?”

“Can’t I enjoy the company of my best friend?” Bucky turns to get a good look at him finally. His blond hair is damp from a shower, and a fresh bandage sits over his nose. “Did you break your nose again last night? Maybe it’ll get smaller this time around.”

Steve rolls his eyes, touching the bandage gently. “Stop changing the subject. How’s your guy?”

“You know, for a long time if someone asked me that question I’d assume they were asking about you.”

He gives Bucky a flat look.

Bucky throws his arms up, his left hand hanging limply at the wrist. “I don’t know what to say, okay! He went somewhere this morning and wasn’t back by the time I woke up. His friend was coming to take out their dog and I’m not exactly ready to meet her—”

“Girlfriend?”

“More like a sister, I think.” Bucky continues, “and I hadn’t seen you since before you went on last night, so.”

Steve reaches over and thumps Bucky on the shoulder. “You know you’re always welcome here.”

Bucky looks at Steve’s hand where it now rests on his shoulder. There’s a nasty bite mark on the webbing between the thumb and pointer finger. “Who almost took your finger off?

“Bucky.”

“Was it Drax? No, Hulk.”

“ _Bucky_.”

“It wouldn’t be safe here, you know that. You’d get arrested, I’d probably be killed. It’s a miracle I’m even able to visit once or twice a week without a SWAT team storming the place,” Bucky stammers, shrugging Steve’s hand off his shoulder.

Something odd passes Steve’s face, but it passes soon enough. He looks at Bucky softly, maybe fondly. He notices just then that the purple under Steve’s eyes aren’t fading black eyes, like they’re both used to, but just bags. Fatigue. Bucky runs his fingers over them, like Clint had done the previous night, but it’s less intimate. More… familiar. Tracing what’s already known. Reminds Bucky of when they were kids and he was saving scrawny little Steve from bullies on the playground. Who knew one day it’d be the other way around. Except the bullies were Nazis and the playground is a highway in Washington DC. And maybe Bucky was the bully a little bit in that situation.

Still.

Steve throws an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, and this time Bucky lets him hover close.

“So, _this guy_ …”

Bucky groans, lifting his hands to cover his face, hardly managing to shield anything when his left refuses to comply. “He’s _nice_ , Steve.”

“What, and I’m not?”

“Not nice like you, Captain America. He’s nice like…” Bucky thinks for a moment. “He and his best friend used to be some crime fighting duo who fought enemies with their bows and arrows. And he bought me a drink after I won my first fight in a while, and is letting me stay at his place even though he doesn’t know me. Doesn’t know about the shit I’ve done.”

Steve knocks the sides of their heads together affectionately. “If he can get past the underground fighting ring I think he might be okay with the brain washing thing.”

Bucky pulls away, just slightly, enough to raise his eyebrows at his best friend. “Not exactly the same thing.”

~

When Bucky gets back to Clint’s apartment, its nearly evening, the sun setting on the New York skyline. Clint is sitting on the couch eating pizza, Lucky at his side eating his own slice. Bucky stares at them, frowning.

“Should a dog be eating pizza?”

Clint shrugs, not looking up from whatever he’s looking at on his phone. Bucky rounds the couch, sitting on the chair beside the couch to avoid sitting next to Clint. “It’s his favorite food. What did you get up to today?”

“Visited Steve.”

Around a mouthful of pizza, Clint asks, “who’s Steve?”

That’s a great question. “Captain America.” Clint chokes and drops his phone. “My best friend.”

“Your best friend is someone you beat the shit out of on a regular basis?”

Bucky waves a hand. “Our relationship seemed to dwindle down to that even before the accords. Now we just get paid for it.”

The frown on Clint’s face is unpleasant to look at. “What do you mean?”

“Doesn’t matter. Pass me a slice.” Clint complies, and seems to accept that Bucky doesn’t want to talk about it.

They eat their pizza in relative silence, the only thing breaking it being the sounds of Lucky’s slobbery munching. Clint eats most of the box by himself, leaving it on top of the one that was already discarded on the table when it’s empty.

“You can have your bed back,” Bucky says eventually. “I needed that sleep last night, thank you.”

“No need to thank me.”

“I have every reason to.” Bucky plays absently with his limp metal hand, running his fingers along the panels that he can’t feel as he talks, avoiding looking at Clint, who surely is looking at him. “Steve’s on the enhanced person list, so I can’t stay with him ‘cause he could get arrested. And, well, lets just say that I’m not the safest person for an enhanced person to be harbouring.”

Clint reaches forward suddenly, wrapping his hands around Bucky’s, both metal and flesh. He holds them in such a way that forces the metal one to curl in on itself like a fist, the flesh one cupped over it. His own hold them on top of that, enveloping them almost completely. His hands are surprisingly big; Bucky hadn’t noticed. _Archer’s hands._

There’s almost certainly a flush on Bucky’s face, which he can’t even cover because Clint has his hands wrapped up. Maybe his mouth is hanging open a little. He forces himself to look at Clint, his brown eyes meeting Clint’s blue ones. Bucky wants to say something, but doesn’t know what. He snaps his mouth closed, his teeth clicking loudly and filling the air between them.

Clint’s eyes leave Bucky’s, looking down at their hands. He separates them slowly, not pulling away, but leaning in close and studying the metal. “Can you feel it?”

It takes a moment for Bucky to realize what Clint means. “Right now, no. But usually, there’s some sort of sensation. Not exactly touch, but…”

One of Clint’s long fingers runs up the nearly flat plane of Bucky’s left middle finger, catching on the rim of the panel where a fingerprint should be.

Bucky desperately wishes that the hand was up and running properly, just so he could feel the sensation of Clint’s delicate fingers running along it and treating it like it might fall apart in his hands if he doesn’t handle it properly.

Clint stands suddenly, letting go of Bucky’s hand. “Bed,” he mutters, licking his lips and running a hand through his shaggy hair. He turns and looks at Lucky, who jumps off the couch and goes into the room, like he knows exactly what Clint said. Bucky feels cold, like cold water is trickling down his arm and into his body. “Good night,” Clint rushes out, and disappears.

It is only once Bucky is alone, the ghost of a touch along his fingers, that he realizes that his right hand was gripping the seat of the chair so hard that some of the seams have ripped, spilling out cotton.

~

Things get less strange, after that.

Tony is back after a few weeks to fix the arm (“Seriously, Terminator, have you no respect for this fine piece of machinery on you?”), and Bucky is back in the ring. He pays the rent and sleeps in his own bed for the first time in what feels like months but has in reality only been days. Bucky tries not to think about it, but while he lies awake at night worrying about whether or not he really locked his door (he always does), he thinks about how soft Clint’s bed was, and the warm presence of Lucky at his feet, and falls asleep quickly.

And maybe he wonders what it would feel like if Clint held his newly restored metal hand like he did that night, and what kind of sensations that would cause. He rubs his fingers together, staring at the peeling wall absent of any arrow holes, and knows that it doesn’t feel the same.

~

Bucky gets to Clint’s one evening after a fight, in considerably better shape than he would usually be. Someone newer, apparently, not as experienced.

The door swings open almost as soon as he knocks, revealing a pale and tired looking Clint. His eyes are rimmed with purple, like he hasn’t gotten enough sleep the past few days, his hair sitting flat and sadly on his head.

Bucky steps in and around him, venturing further into the apartment. Once the door is closed and Clint has followed Bucky into the living room, he says, “do you want me to ask?”

Clint gestures vaguely.

“Are you okay?”

Another motion, followed by a deep sigh. He flops back onto the couch, an arm thrown over his face. Bucky sits beside him, enough distance between them so they’re not touching but not so far that Bucky can’t reach forward if he needs to.

Finally, from behind his arm, Clint speaks up. “My brother died six years ago around this time.”

Bucky glances over at the photo of Clint and the man on the windowsill. “I’m sorry,” is all he can say, sitting still and watching Clint carefully.

“He wasn’t the greatest brother,” Clint admits, shrugging. He sits up, wrinkling his nose as he reaches forward and grabs something from the coffee table. “But today, I got a letter from him.”

“You _what?”_

Clint holds up what must be the letter, five or six pages stapled at the corner with creases where they were once folded. “It’s definitely him. He used all our codes, and apologized for—” Clint cuts himself off, clearly holding back something, then continues, “for what happened. Among other things.” Clint adds that last part somewhat grumpily. He flips through the pages of the letter absently while Bucky stares at him.

Bucky knows a thing or two about dead men coming back to life. He just doesn’t know how to apply it here. “Did he explain how…?”

“Not really. Something about wanting a better life away from the shit I was getting up to, which, frankly, wasn’t any better than what _he_ was doing, but whatever.”

Seizing the opportunity, Bucky reaches forward and grabs Clint’s hand, dark metal stark against Clint’s pale skin. He seems surprised by the action but doesn’t pull away, much to Bucky’s relief. He just sits, unmoving, holding onto the letter in one hand and Bucky with the other.

“I’m not very good at comfort,” Bucky says.

“You don’t need to be.” Apparently Bucky doesn’t _need_ to be a lot of things, to Clint. Maybe that’s okay.

At some point they’ve managed to move until they’re shoulder to shoulder, hands held together. They’re not really looking at each other, Clint down at the letter and at their hands, Bucky around the apartment and at the photo across from them, hardly visible from where they sit, just the green of the brother’s suit, the purple of Clint’s shirt, the starkness of their hair against a dark background.

Bucky isn’t even paying attention when Clint brushes his fingers along the gash on Bucky’s forehead with his fingers. His head snaps back around to find that Clint is close and looking at him strangely, his eyes flicking around Bucky’s face. “Did you fight good today?”

“I always fight good.”

Clint laughs. A decent, hearty laugh that makes him tip his head back and move a little bit away from Bucky. He realizes, looking at the soft smile that falls onto Clint’s lips after he gets the laugh out, how much he’d like to kiss him.

He does, when Clint rocks back forward, opening his mouth to say something. They’re still, for a moment, their lips pressed together, but then Clint moans, just a small, quiet thing as he drops the papers, and Bucky presses forward even more, his right hand moving up to hold the side of Clint’s head. His fingers press into soft blonde hair at the same time Clint’s hands are reaching up to hold onto either side of Bucky’s neck, underneath his curtain of dark hair.

Clint pulls away first to get a breath, diving back in before Bucky can even say anything. He wants to get his hands everywhere, they move up and down the side of Clint’s face and side, pulling their chests together. It doesn’t seem like they can get close enough, like this is something they both _need_ , finally something they can agree on.

Bucky’s mouth moves to the side of Clint’s, then down until he’s pressing his face into the soft skin of his neck. “We should’ve done this a while ago,” Clint breathes, one of his hands now at the back of Bucky’s neck. Bucky just laughs, hot air against Clint’s neck as he does so.

A moan follows the laugh soon enough as Clint manages to slip a hand between them, digging underneath Bucky’s shirt and near the hem of his pants. “Okay, bedroom,” Bucky gasps, separating themselves. When he looks at Clint, with his pink lips and rumpled hair, he looks closer to himself than he had earlier, somehow. “I thought you’d never ask,” he says, leaning forward to kiss Bucky again, hauling them both up and pulling them towards his bedroom.

They stay close throughout the short walk to the room, getting distracted a few times by each other, finally shutting the door behind them after way, way too long.


	2. Double Check The Lock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry this took so long to get up! i had finals to worry about but i'm finally done for the year!
> 
> this chapter is a bit shorter than chapter one, so i hope you don't mind.
> 
> special thanks to em, @spidergwenstefani, for betaing and fixing all my mistakes. anything left behind is my own!
> 
> enjoy :)

The first thing Clint notices upon waking is Bucky asleep next to him. It’s not a very deep or sound sleep, Clint thinks, his breaths small and controlled, his eyebrows pulled down in a slight frown. They’re not touching, Bucky on his back with both of his arms stock still beside him, Clint on his side, glancing over him. He yearns to touch, yet is afraid of waking up Bucky who would probably wake up as soon as Clint inched any closer.

_ What are you dreaming about?  _ Clint thinks, shifting so his head is resting back against the pillow, his fingers drifting towards where Bucky’s hair is splayed out. He curls a strand of it around his finger, remembering the previous night when he had been able to bury his fingers into all of it, and the feel of Bucky’s hands in his own. Bucky looks younger while he’s asleep, his features softened and open. The image is ruined by all of the bruises and the scratches littering his face and body, some of which Clint left. Part of Clint feels bad, wondering how sore Bucky feels right now, but then realizes that’s probably stupid, considering Clint just feels pleasantly tired.

Barney’s letter sits in the back of Clint’s mind. The revelation that he’s been alive all this time somehow doesn’t feel quite as big as some of his other revelations, like where he’s been and what he’s been up to, and that he’s actually  _ sorry _ . A cabin somewhere in Europe, surrounded by fields and trees and nothing else. No accords, no people except for the town an hour away.  _ It’s yours, if you want it. You and that girl and that dog. All you have to do is say the word,  _ Barney wrote, no return address on the letter but a phone number signed with his name. Clint doesn’t even know how he knows about Kate and Lucky. 

Clint finally moves closer to Bucky, pushing the thought of his brother out of his mind. He stirs as soon as Clint touches him, like he predicted, his eyes opening and his head snapping towards Clint. Bucky visibly relaxes when Clint raises his eyebrows, exhaling and dropping his head back onto the pillow.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” says Clint. Bucky’s lips move but no sound comes out. “Shit,” Clint mutters, sitting up and looking for his hearing aids, feeling around the blankets. What had they done with them last night?

Something taps on Clint’s shoulder. He cranes his head back to find Bucky holding both of them in his right hand, holding them out. Clint grins and takes them, slipping them into place and turning them on. “Thanks. What did you say?”

Bucky averts his eyes. “Nothing important.”

Clint lets it slide, falling back next to where Bucky is leaning on one arm, nearly leaning over Clint. Bucky is staring at him, his eyebrows raised. Clint reaches up and cradles his cheek, his thumb resting gently over Bucky’s lips. “Has anyone told you that you look younger when you sleep?”

That hits close to home somehow, Bucky’s face screwing up unpleasantly. “I try not to let many people make a habit of watching me sleep.”

Clint doesn’t ask him to elaborate, just presses his fingers to the soft skin of Bucky’s cheek, over a bruise.. This makes Bucky’s shoulders loosen, letting his body fall back next to Clint with his arm underneath them. Bucky presses his mouth at the corner of Clint’s mouth and stays there for a few seconds, before he leans back, staring at the ceiling. Clint follows his gaze until he lands on the arrow holes. “I miss it,” he says quietly. Barney’s letter crosses his mind again.

“Do you still have them?” Bucky asks, glancing over at Clint.

He nods slowly, eyes flicking over to the closet.

Bucky seems to get it, looking contemplative. “You know, I know somewhere we can go where you can shoot.”

Clint sits up, staring at Bucky. Their eyes lock and don’t falter for a long time before Clint finally says, “you’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

Spluttering out a nervous laugh, Clint covers his mouth. “I can’t, you know I can’t.”

Bucky follows suit and sits up, his face serious but the corners of his mouth are turned up. “You can! I can take— mmf.” Bucky is cut off by Clint firmly pressing their lips together, both of his hands planted on either side of Bucky’s head. It’s a bit of a clumsy kiss, Clint nearly knocking both of them over and off the bed. He’s giddy, almost, at the thought of holding a bow in his hands again. It’s been… Jesus, he doesn’t even know. Stopped keeping track after the first couple months.

“What time is it?” Bucky mutters into Clint’s mouth. “No one’s usually at the facility in the mornings, if we go now—”

“Eight, nine. Ten, tops.” Clint rolls away and out of bed, retrieving his underwear and a t-shirt from the floor, leaving Bucky with a smug look on his face. He stops in front of his closet, looking the doors up and down. Slow and unsure, Clint opens the doors, pushing past his clothes and the boxes, retrieving the duffel bag containing all of Clint and Kate’s things. Bucky watches Clint drop the bag onto the bed.

Bucky opens it when Clint just stares at it and bites his nail, digging through all of its contents. Clint knows what’s in it anyway, even if its been years since it’s been touched. Two bows, countless arrows of various types, purple and black clothes. Everything from Clint’s life before the accords. Bucky doesn’t take anything out, seemingly respecting Clint’s worry about having it out in the open, even just in the apartment, but pokes around as he pleases.

Once Bucky is up and dressed, the glove covering his hand, Clint hefts the duffle bag over his shoulder and they make their way to the front of the apartment. The bag hasn’t even been out of the closet in years, much less the apartment. He wants to go, of course he does, just the thought of holding the bow in his hands enough to bubble excitement in his veins, but the worry still sits hard on his unconsciousness. Clint’s hands grip so tightly on the strap that his knuckles turn white.

“Act natural,” Bucky tells him, placing one hand on Clint’s shoulder and the other over Clint’s hand on the strap. “We’ll be okay.” Clint nods solemnly. Bucky adds, “we don’t  _ have _ to go.”

Yet, Clint has never been so sure of anything in his life.

~

Bucky takes them through a long and winding route, a few trains and a lot of walking. Clint gets the paranoia, but still wonders if it’s really worth it to walk around the same block of buildings three times.

Eventually they stop not at the abandoned building like Clint expected, but at one of the office buildings further down the street. Bucky walks in and past the front desk without saying a word to anyone, leaving Clint to stumble after him. It’s hard to picture the underground fighting ring takes place underneath this innocent office building, Clint thinks as they pass a poster of a kitten hanging from a branch captioned “hang in there!” People sit at desks, typing on computers or talking on the phone, no one giving them a second look as they push through a door labelled “employees only”. The door opens to what looks like a closet, a few filing cabinets shoved up against one of the walls and shelves full of office supplies lined up on the others. Clint is opening his mouth to say something when Bucky opens one of the filing cabinets, concentrating as he flips through the papers until he seems to find the one he’s looking for. He reaches into the cabinet, between two folders, and holds his hands there. Clint hears a very distinct  _ click _ of a panel opening next to the cabinets.

“Color me impressed,” comments Clint as Bucky steps around the filing cabinets to holds his eye up to the scanner that has just revealed itself on the wall.

“What were you expecting?” The filing cabinets slide apart to reveal a door on the floor, which Bucky stoops down to open.

“I don’t know,” Clint shrugs as Bucky starts to climb down the ladder, waving for Clint to follow. “Long, dark hallways. Creepy men asking for passwords.” He adjusts the duffle bag so it hangs across his chest and follows once Bucky disappears completely, shutting the trap door delicately. The ladder doesn’t go down too far, enough to take them to what would normally probably be basement level. Clint hops off the ladder, gathering his surroundings. The best comparison would be a hospital, just a long empty hallway painted floor to ceiling in white with fluorescent lights casting everything in a sickly glow. Bucky is standing to the side with a slight smirk on his face and his hands on his hips.

“Can’t say I’m too amazed yet,” Clint manages, even though he is. He had never stopped to consider what the place looks like behind the actual ring.

Bucky is able to tell that he’s bluffing, shoving good naturedly at Clint’s shoulder and pressing forward down the hallway. Once they turn a corner Clint realizes that the place is built like a maze, with doors labelled with words and symbols that don’t make sense and hallways that split off into three or four  _ more  _ hallways. Bucky seems to know where he’s going, so Clint doesn’t worry. He does wonder if any of the doors or hallways that they skip actually go anywhere, or if they’re just a part of the maze meant to confuse anyone who sneaks in.

They stop abruptly in a hallway, Bucky holding his arm out to stop Clint. They stand in silence for a long few seconds. Clint is sure that his heart is beating loudly enough to be heard by Bucky, but whatever it is that he really hears is coming from the door to their left. Bucky isn’t freaking out, per se, but he’s obviously confused, his eyebrows furrowed and his eyes flicking between the door and the hallway ahead of them. Clint takes this as a good thing, somehow. If Bucky thought they were in danger, or that someone is here when they shouldn’t be, they wouldn’t be hanging around outside the door.

Bucky seems to make a decision, looking over at Clint. “Wait here.”

_ That _ doesn’t sound good, but Clint does, taking a long stride back so he’s up against the opposite wall. Bucky moves forward to turn the door handle but jumps back when the door opens before he can get to it.

Behind the door stands a tall, bald black man wearing an eyepatch and a long dark coat, looking pensively between Clint and Bucky with his one eye. The eye finally stops on Clint, who holds the straps of his bag tightly against his chest.

“Sergeant Barnes, you’re here early.”

Bucky twitches when the man calls him sergeant. Clint unconsciously raises his eyebrows.  _ Sergeant? _

“Director Fury,” Bucky grits out in acknowledgement. It’s then that Clint realizes that this must be  _ Nick Fury _ , the man who runs the fighting ring.

“You’ve brought a friend,” comments Fury, still keeping his gaze steady on Clint.

Someone else steps up next to Fury from inside the room, flipping a mask up as he leans out of the doorway. “I didn’t know Barnes had friends outside of Rogers.”

That’s Tony Stark, Clint would recognize him anywhere. He’s not dressed in his usual suit and tie like he would be on a magazine cover, instead just in a t-shirt and jeans, his hands covered in oil and the mask on his head looking worse for wear. Clint knew that Stark funded and built everything in the ring, but he hadn’t been expecting  _ this. _

Stark looks Clint up and down. “He doesn’t look much like a fighter,” he continues.

“He’s not,” Bucky says. Clint can hear the eye-roll in his voice. “We need the ring. And some targets, or dummies.”

There’s the slightest hint of emotion on Fury’s face, but it disappears the next moment. Stark, on the other hand, claps his hands together. “Oh, fun. Your wish is my command, Robocop.” Stark thumps Fury on the shoulder and backs back into the room, off to apparently do what Bucky asks. Fury still stands in the doorway, looking passively at Clint.

“Hi,” Clint says awkwardly.

This makes Fury chuckle slightly, his first real show of emotion, stepping out of the doorframe and shutting it behind him. “Good one, Barnes,” is all he says as he passes the two of them, leaving Clint to wonder what exactly that means.

Bucky seems to be mulling that over, too, then shakes his head and grabs Clint’s hand. He pulls him along the hallway, in the opposite direction that Fury went, seemingly trying to get them as far away from Stark and Fury. 

“I feel like I just met your parents,” Clint says casually as they turn a corner. Bucky scoffs.

“That’s about as close as you’ll ever get.”

Clint doesn’t think about the implications of that statement. Instead, he quickens his pace slightly so he’s right next to Bucky, knocking their shoulders together. Bucky looks over at him, his lips a thin line. He’s clearly upset that they ran into Stark and Fury. Clint squeezes Bucky’s hand reassuringly. “It’s okay.”

Bucky shrugs a shoulder, looking back in front of them. “I didn’t want you to… get wrapped up, you know.”

He doesn’t, but Clint nods his head anyway. Bucky’s not looking at him, though, pulling them to a stop in front of a double door, the first of its kind in the facility as far as Clint can tell. Bucky lets go of Clint’s hand to push them open, leading them into a locker room. It looks exactly like a locker room in a public high school, not that Clint would really know. The room is long, another doorway across from them, but lined with four smaller, square rooms of lockers in a U shape. Benches sit underneath them against the wall and in between them like islands. They’re all painted in that deep shade of purple that Clint recognizes from the  _ A _ graffiti upstairs on the elevator and the words on the pamphlets. They’re surprisingly pristine, in fact, the entire place is a lot cleaner than Clint was expecting. He was anticipating dingy, and poorly run. Clint supposes he shouldn’t have expected any less from Tony-Fucking-Stark.

No one is in the locker room. They walk through it without stopping, moving into the next room. This part isn’t so much a room, Clint supposes. It looks like the basement of a stadium, almost, with tall slanted ceilings and equipment backed up against walls. There’s no one around right now, but Clint can almost picture the place on a work night, hundreds of people working the equipment and running the show. Directly in front of them is a giant archway, currently closed. Clint knows where  _ that _ goes.

Bucky walks right up to it, stepping to the side and reaching up and pulling a lever. Clint follows, standing in the middle as it opens, letting the light from inside the ring slowly streak through the opening until the entire door is open. He can feel his heart beating hard in his chest as he is engulfed in light as he steps forward into the ring, Bucky close behind him.

The ring is at full size, like it would be for a heavy hitters fight, various targets and dummies lined up around the field. It’s larger than it looks from the viewers perspective two stories above, Clint thinks, blinking slowly. He imagines that this is what it feels like to stand in the center of an empty stadium, the lights bearing down on them and an almost eerie quiet once the door stops opening behind him.

Something elbows his stomach, bringing Clint out of his daze. Bucky is grinning when Clint looks over. “Cool, isn’t it?”

Clint smiles back, something fluttering in his stomach. He tells himself it’s excitement,  _ not _ Bucky’s ridiculously handsome face. “Yeah,” Clint breathes, forcing himself to tear his eyes from Bucky and look up at the bright lights bearing down on them. Bucky tugs Clint further inside, until they’re in the middle of the ring, virtually surrounded by the targets. He looks at Clint expectantly, eyeing the duffel bag. Clint huffs, shrugging it off his shoulder and onto the ground, crouching to unzipping it.

Everything is exactly where he left it. He pulls out the larger of the two collapsible bows, a quiver, and all of the normal arrows he can find in the bag. No need for trick arrows, today.

Bucky is watching him carefully, having moved to sit on the ground next to the bag. He looks cute, Clint thinks, his body relaxed and head resting on his metal fist. He’s more relaxed sitting in the middle of an underground fighting ring than he is in Clint’s apartment. Clint tries not to take that too personally.

Lastly, Clint slips on the black, fingerless tactical gloves as he stands, then retracts the bow into its full form, which is nearly as long as his body. Bucky passes up the quiver that was still sitting on the ground, now filled with arrows, which Clint takes and slings over his shoulder and across his chest, like the bag had been a minute ago.

“How long has it been since you’ve done this?”

Clint shrugs, feeling the weight of the bow in his hand experimentally. “However long it’s been since the accords passed.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything to that, just watches Clint tug on the string, tighten it, then pull an arrow from the quiver and nock it, adjusting his stance and breathing in deeply.  _ Feels like I never stopped, _ Clint thinks, squinting at a target several yards away. “If I fuck this up, you don’t get to laugh,” Clint says.

“What happened to  _ just can’t seem to miss?” _ Bucky mocks in a bad impression of Clint’s voice.

He’s right and he knows it. Bucky has seen Clint make seemingly impossible shots in the apartment before. This should be a hundred times simpler.

With that, Clint breathes in, then releases, letting the arrow fly. He doesn’t have to look to know it hits the center.

Clint manages to hold back a laugh as Bucky sits up straight, his eyebrows raising and mouth falling open comically.

“Told you,” Clint says, lowering the bow.

Bucky stares at him. “You are grossly underestimating your skills.” That makes Clint laugh, and maybe a little proud. Bucky continues, “come ‘ere.”

He does, stepping the scant few feet between them until he is leaning over Bucky. He pulls Clint down by the neck as he leans up, pressing their mouths together when they meet in the middle. Clint can’t do much besides press his gloved hand to Bucky’s shoulder, trying to find his balance as Bucky kisses him senseless. He may not be able to shoot straight once Bucky finally releases him.

When he does, just leaning back a little and looking up at Clint with earnest blue eyes, he says, “do that again.”

-

The last time Bucky checked, he was supposed to be the best shot in the world.

Apparently, sometime between being un-brainwashed, joining SHIELD, SHIELD getting destroyed, the accords, and the avengers initiative, someone else had stepped into that spot. That’s the natural order of things, he supposes, but still. Bucky hasn’t touched a gun in years. He can see why Clint was some sort of bow-and-arrow wielding vigilante. He really doesn’t miss, hitting every target straight in the middle, every dummy struck directly where Bucky marks with a pen. It’s  _ amazing. _ Bucky can hardly look away.

“Can you split it down the middle?” Bucky asks sometime after that first shot, and long after the ones that followed. Clint is walking around the ring, pulling arrows from the chests and heads of dummies, looking thoughtful. “Like Robin Hood?”

“If they were wood, probably.” Clint holds up one of his arrows as he gets closer. “These are too strong to be split like that.”

“Whatever you say, prince of thieves.”

Clint scoffs, finally stopping next to Bucky and nudging him gently. Warmth spreads from the spot and throughout his body as Clint says, “I’m  _ better  _ than Robin Hood, thank you very much.”

Bucky believes him. Still, he presses his hand to the spot that Clint touched and forces himself to think clearly. He opens his mouth to tease further but Clint cuts him off. “Have you ever shot a bow?”

Has he? Hydra trained him with most weapons, but he can’t imagine a bow and arrow was on that list. “Let’s find out,” is what Bucky eventually comes up with to say. Clint looks at him quizzically, but doesn’t press, just stepping over to the duffel and grabbing the other bow, snapping it open and handing it over to Bucky.

“It’s Katie’s bow, but she shouldn’t be too pissed that I’m letting you use it.” Clint adjusts the string, his own bow tucked underneath his arm. “In fact, she might be pleased to find it’s gotten some use. Aw, she’s gonna be mad that I got to shoot and she didn’t.”

Bucky takes the bow when it’s handed to him. It’s surprisingly light in his hands. “Maybe she can come here sometime.”

Clint stops mid movement, staring at Bucky with his bow slack in his hand. “You’d let her come in here?”

“I brought you, didn’t I?”

“That’s… different.”

Bucky supposes it is. “If you trust her, I trust her.”

Something crosses Clint’s face. He steps closer to Bucky, moving forward until they’re nearly touching. Bucky can feel his warmth, spilling out onto his skin even more as one of Clint’s hands raise to press to the side of his neck. It’s a soft, delicate touch, not like how people usually touch Bucky’s neck are. He leans into Clint, just slightly, his eyes closing.  _ Jesus,  _ Bucky thinks,  _ what is happening to me?  _

“Maybe that America girl can get her in.”

Bucky opens his eyes, surprised. “That’s a good idea.”

Clint steps back, a small smile on his face. “I know, I’m full of them.” Bucky tries not to miss his warmth, but doesn’t get too long to dwell on it before Clint is handing him a single arrow. “Feet shoulder length apart, don’t lock your elbow, keep your fingers loose. Just focus on—”

He doesn’t get to hear what to focus on, because Bucky has already shot the arrow.

Huh. Maybe Hydra  _ did  _ teach him how to use a bow. The arrow is pierced straight through the center of a target a few yards away. Clint’s eyebrows are raised yet his jaw is set, confusion hinting at his voice as he says, “I wasn’t expecting that.”

Bucky lowers the bow. “Neither was I.”

A strange silence settles between them. Not really uncomfortable, but like Clint is realizing something. Bucky is just as confused. He turns and opens his mouth to say something dismissive to Clint when he’s interrupted.

“I hate to interrupt, Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS says, “but sir would like to let you know that others are arriving to train as well. By my estimates you have three minutes and forty two seconds before the Black Widow and Captain Marvel enter. Forty one, forty-”

“Thank you JARVIS,” calls Bucky, collapsing the bow and setting it delicately in the duffel bag. He hurries to collect the rest of the arrows from dummies and targets.

Clint stares up at the ceiling. “JARVIS?” he wonders aloud, apparently not in much of a hurry to get out of the ring before others enter.

Bucky waves his left hand, the one not holding all the arrows. “Stark’s artificial intelligence butler.” He grabs Clint’s hand as he passes, tugging him towards the bag. Clint doesn’t say anything else as they pack up, stooping to pick up the duffel bag once Bucky has put the arrows in, slinging it over his shoulders like he had done before. Bucky leads them through the still open door, eyes scanning every corner. He doesn’t think anyone would give Clint shit, but he’s afraid of what the others might think of  _ Bucky _ once they see him. He thinks back to what Clint said about meeting the parents. This is like some sort of reverse, fucked up version of that.

Meeting the people your  _ not-boyfriend _ beats up on the regular.

He tries not to wince as he thinks about it. A conversation for another day.

Clint is still close behind, hand tucked safely in Bucky’s. His breath is calm and steady, even as they move through the giant entryway. Faint voices can be heard through the door to the locker room, so Bucky steers them away, waving through equipment and small robots that beep at them as they pass. Bucky doesn’t have to look over his shoulder to know that Clint is looking back in the direction they came from, towards the lockers.

“Another time,” Bucky whispers back towards Clint, tugging his hand until they’re shoulder to shoulder.

Clint doesn’t answer, just gives Bucky a crooked half smile and knocks their shoulders together good naturedly, still holding his hand tightly. Something about the action reads as him saying  _ whatever you want. _

Bucky forces his eyes to stay ahead, stopping and standing stock still behind boxes of who knows what every once in a while as someone, a SHIELD agent or whoever, passes. Eventually, at the second white door after a streak of black ones, Bucky punches in a key code and leads them inside. He allows himself to stop and breath for a moment, Clint going back and forth between looking at him and looking at their surroundings. It’s just another long hallway, but with no more doors or corners, just an elevator on the far wall. Clint moves towards it after he comes to some sort of conclusion, letting Bucky listen to his own quickly beating heart.

“You think you can make it back to your apartment without killing yourself?” Bucky asks once he has calmed down significantly and moved to where Clint was waiting by the elevator. No one saw Clint. He could probably handle meeting all of the other fighters, can certainly hold his own, but Bucky doesn’t feel quite ready for that. No one who would care, Bucky knows, although he does have Stark and Fury to worry about.

“I don’t even know where this goes,” says Clint, pressing his fingers lightly to the sleek metal. He looks over at Bucky and raises an eyebrow slyly. “You can’t walk me home?”

He knows Clint is joking, but Bucky shakes his head and presses the  _ up _ button for him. “It’s another office building nearby, no one will question you coming out of it. Don’t bother trying to go back in, it won’t open from up there.” Clint nods, looking between the elevator and Bucky. “Stop thinking about me, asshole,” Bucky mutters, averting his gaze and rubbing at his mouth with his metal hand.

Clint scoffs and grabs the hand ( _ his  _ hand, Bucky reminds himself) to intertwine their fingers. Clint’s other hand moves up to caress the side of Bucky’s face and forces their eyes to lock in an oddly serious moment for him. Bucky can feel his mouth hanging open a little, partially because of the intimacy and half something else that Bucky can’t quite put his finger on.

“You’re making me nervous,” Bucky says as casually as he can, placing his flesh hand over Clint’s. His face is unreadable as he studies Bucky’s face, clearly thinking about something. Clint opens his mouth, but is cut off by the light  _ ping _ of the elevator opening.

“We’ll talk later,” Clint promises, leaning down to press their lips together for only the third time that day, and maybe the millionth since the night before. Bucky relishes in it for the few moments it lasts, letting Clint pull away before Bucky can chase after more. “ _ Later,”  _ he repeats, letting go of Bucky’s hand and face and placing his own on the straps of the duffel. He backs into the elevator, smiling thinly. It’s genuine and warm, so Bucky smiles back, but not entirely open.

The elevator doors close, yet still Bucky stands, his lips turned up and the gears in his arm turning with his brain, wondering where this leaves them.

~

They don’t talk about it. Not really.

Things get more strange after that night, at least by Bucky’s standards. They see each other at least once a day, Bucky staying over at Clint’s on nights where he doesn’t work and waking up there on the mornings he does. They fall into something that can be best be described as  _ domestic, _ for a little while. Clint makes excessive amounts of coffee and burns pretty much everything he cooks so Bucky takes over the kitchen most nights, scraping together meals from what Clint has in the fridge (it’s usually better than what’s in Bucky’s fridge, anyhow). They roll up the ratty carpet in Clint’s living room and dance to the 40s records that Bucky brought from his apartment, unable to keep straight faces as they laugh into each other’s mouths and eat apples on the firescape and throw pieces at pigeons on the street.

Bucky has moments where he remembers the unspoken things. He forgets how to work Clint’s microwave one evening, staring at the numbers and only being able to remember something about  _ mission report December 16 _ and a street light. Clint just stared at him quizzically, stepping forward and pressing the buttons himself, seemingly not too bothered by Bucky short-circuiting and his old conditioning breaking through for a few moments.

There was also the night he woke up in the middle of locking, unlocking, and relocking Clint’s bathroom window, even though the last thing he remembers was catching one of Hulk’s fists with his metal arm. He had continued moving throughout Clint’s house and double checking the locks, just to be sure, until he finally slipped into bed with Clint. He only realized that he was still bloody and grimy from the fight when Clint pointed out the blood on the sheets the next morning.

Clint had helped him clean up without question.

Bucky often thinks that he doesn’t deserve Clint. Doesn’t deserve his hospitality, coffee, smiles, or delicate touches. Bucky sits and stares at the letter from Clint’s brother that sits on the bedside table for hours while Clint sleeps, never touching or opening it, just looking. He hasn’t mentioned it since the night they first kissed, but has clearly been thinking about it and reading it over. The pages get more wrinkled and worn every day, and Bucky notices a giant coffee stain on the front appear one morning when he had sworn it had been spotless fifteen minutes before when it had been in the living room. Clint is purposefully not disclosing the details of this letter, but Bucky doesn't press. It’s not like he’s being totally honest either.

So, for now, it’s an unspoken thing.

~

Bucky meets Kate on accident.

He’s fresh off of a fight with someone he doesn’t even remember the name of, probably some mutant kid too young to really remember the passing of the accords and won’t be returning for more than a few fights. Still, he thinks he may be sporting a fresh black eye and an actual, hot shower sounds nice instead of the cold water his own apartment is sure to supply. Clint gave him a key to the apartment but Bucky doesn’t feel right using it, so he knocks once he steps up to the door.

It swings open so quickly that Bucky’s fist is left hovering in the air, dangerously close to the face of a young, dark haired girl. He scrambles to drop his hand and hide it in his sweatshirt pocket, even if it’s covered by the glove.

“Oh, it’s you,” the girl says, just as Bucky is thinking the same thing. Kate is smaller than Bucky had been picturing, and her eyes are lighter than had been conveyed in the many pictures of her in Clint’s apartment. She looks like she’s wearing pajamas, in a t-shirt way too big for her and boxers that Bucky is pretty sure are Clint’s.

When Bucky doesn’t say anything to that Kate rolls her eyes and steps to the side, apparently letting him in. Bucky doesn’t scramble inside like he used to, but he still bolts the door carefully behind him. Kate has moved into the living room and is sitting in one of the arm chairs with Lucky curled up in the small spot next to her, a laptop in front of her.

Bucky stands awkwardly in the entryway. “Where’s—”

A hand appears from the other side of the couch, waving Bucky over. He does, moving up and looking over the couch to find a very ill-looking Clint buried under several blankets. He’s pale and sweaty, his eyes half lidded as he smiles meekly at Bucky. Bucky clasps the hand that Clint had been holding up, the skin cold and clammy to touch. “It would probably be dumb to ask how you’re feeling?”

Clint and Kate both snort. Bucky glances between the two of them, but Clint waves his other hand weakly. “Ignore her, she’s being a terrible houseguest.”

“I’m allowed to hang around my best friend’s apartment, especially if he’s sick,” Kate chimes in between furious typing on the computer.

“I can leave, if you’d like,” says Bucky, not really meaning it. He’s barely finished the sentence when Clint groans.

“No way, you’re staying. I need my best friend and… you here with me.” Bucky ignores the hesitation about what to call Bucky. “I’m dying.”

It’s Bucky’s turn to huff. “You’re not dying.”

“I am.”

Bucky rolls his eyes and reluctantly releases Clint’s hand, which flops back on his chest on top of the blankets. “Can I use your shower?”

“Obviously.”

He leans over the couch to run his fingers delicately through Clint’s hair relishing in the touch of Clint’s hot skin and soft hair, the blonde locks sticking up every which way following Bucky’s movements. He finally moves away once Clint’s eyes have slipped closed and he can feel Kate’s eyes on them, stepping towards the bathroom and pretending like the watchful gaze of Kate doesn’t bother him.

While in the shower Bucky comes to the conclusion that he likes Kate. He can hear her talking from the bathroom, something about sandwiches and homework. Clint chimes in occasionally, albeit quietly, but Bucky’s enhanced hearing makes it easy. He hadn’t been sick the last time Bucky saw him, the morning before. Guilt sets heavily in Bucky’s stomach, that Clint hadn’t called Bucky to tell him he was sick or that he hadn’t been able to come earlier.

It doesn’t matter, Bucky tells himself. He’s here now.

“—and then I got a C minus on the paper, so it didn’t even matter,” Kate finishes, throwing an arm up exasperatedly as Bucky steps out of the bathroom. He’s wearing the same t-shirt he usually wears post-fight, and old sweatpants that he keeps in his backpack, feeling clean and warm. Bucky should probably be wary of Kate seeing the arm, but he can’t be too bothered to care right now. Clint’s blankets look nice, but Bucky avoids them for the time being. He rounds the couch and crouches next to Clint’s head where it’s propped up on the arm rest, turned to the side to get a good look at him. He reaches up and touches Bucky’s wet hair gently, the corners of his mouth turning up.

“This is cute,” Clint comments with a hint of snark, the fingers that were touching Bucky’s hair moving over the black eye. It sends a chill down his spine, starting at the touch of Clint’s fingers and spreading all the way to Bucky’s toes.

Bucky resists the urge to roll his eyes. He also holds back the kiss he wants to place to the soft part of Clint’s wrist, but doesn’t manage to suppress the heart eyes that he’s probably making.

“You should’ve said something, I would’ve come over earlier.”

“Nah, I’m fine.” Clint coughs the last word out and shifts his gaze from Bucky’s pointed look. “Really, I haven’t even vomited in an hour.”

“That doesn’t sound fine.”

The look Clint gives him is strange and doesn’t say much. His eyes flick between Bucky’s face and somewhere in the direction of Kate. He brings the hand not near Bucky’s face up to his mouth, thumb pressed behind his fingers. Bucky recognizes it as sign-language for  _ shut up. _

Bucky didn’t even know he knew sign language.

When he looks over at Kate, Bucky catches the tail end of whatever she was saying, just two fingers pulling down from her chin.  _ Cute. _

When Bucky looks back over at Clint his cheeks are rosy, and probably not just from the fever.

“Well, I’ve had enough college today,” Kate says unceremoniously, standing up. “You guys can keep being lovey dovey out here while I pass out on the bed because I’m Clint’s favorite.” She points at Bucky, then disappears into the room, Lucky following close behind.

Clint sits up enough to allow Bucky to get under him, resting his head against Bucky’s lap. “She’s nice,” he comments, running his metal hand through blonde locks. Clint closes his eyes and hums, settling into Bucky’s space.

“Katie’s not so bad,” mutters Clint, a soft smile on his face. “She likes you enough.”

“Enough?”

“Enough,” Clint confirms, blindly reaching up to pat Bucky’s face. “Not as much as I like you.”

Bucky takes the hand that had flopped against his face and gives into the temptation to run his mouth over Clint’s fingers. Clint laughs weakly. “You need to shave.” Bucky leans down in response, pressing his stubble into Clint’s neck and along his face. Clint’s hands reach up and hold onto either side of Bucky’s head as he laughs, moving until they can press their mouths together.

It’s warm and sweet and maybe a little gross, Clint’s mouth tastes a bit like puke and coffee he shouldn’t be drinking in this state, but Bucky doesn’t even care.

“You shouldn’t be kissing me, you’ll get sick.” Clint leans his head back onto Bucky’s legs, one hand still pressed into Bucky’s hair.

“I can’t get sick.”

That makes Clint frown. Bucky half expects Clint not to question it, like he does with pretty much everything else that’s strange about Bucky, but he says, “does it have anything to do with the arm?”

Forcing himself to look away from Clint, Bucky sniffs awkwardly, trying to find the words in his brain. He’s never really spoken to anyone about it apart from Steve. Even then, Steve already had the baseline information. He doesn’t even know where to  _ begin _ with Clint.

“Whatever it is, you know I don’t care, right?”

Bucky can feel his hand tightening in the blankets. Yes, he knows this. It’s more of admitting the truth to himself that is making him hold his tongue. He opens his mouth to say something, he doesn’t even know exactly what, when Clint hauls himself up and leans against Bucky’s shoulder. His nose is nearly pressed to the side of Bucky’s face. “My brother told me something, in that letter.”

“Have you written back?”

“No. I needed to talk to you first.”

Bucky leans back, enough so he can get a good at Clint but not far enough away to seperate them. “Me?”

“Barney, my brother,” Clint pauses, sucks in a shaky breath, “has been hiding, somewhere in Europe. He has a place there, and he’s leaving, I guess. To who knows where. But he said, that the house could be mine. If I could get there.”

Long silence. Then, “It’s  _ what?” _ Bucky stares at Clint, his mouth likely hanging open comically.

Clint grabs at Bucky’s hands, which were digging into the cushions of the couch so hard they probably would’ve torn. “It’s  _ mine. _ Away from the Initiative, away from the city, far, far away from the accords.” Clint coughs and shields it with his arm, but doesn’t let go of Bucky’s hands. His voice is hoarse when he speaks again. “We can go. You and I.”

_ You and I _ echoes in Bucky’s head. “You know I can’t leave the country. This arm sets off every metal detector known to man. Hell, I don’t even technically  _ exist.” _

“Your past wouldn’t matter. Whatever it is that makes you forget how to function properly, or how you seem to know how to work weapons you don’t ever remember using, or keeps you up at night, it won’t matter.”

Does he deserve that? A chance to start over with Clint? In another country, in a house to call their own?

“I don’t deserve it,” Bucky whispers. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

That makes Clint roll his eyes, then wince. “I don’t have the most clean ledger either, pal.”

Bucky can feel himself soften, his shoulders loosening and hands moving up Clint’s hands and arms to his face, which is flushed pink. He looks at Bucky like he’s something delicate, something that is not the Winter Soldier.

“Okay,” Bucky says after a long while. “If we can figure this out, then. Okay.”

Clint presses forward once more, placing a lingering kiss on the side of Bucky’s face. “Later. Later, we will figure it out.”

Bucky could do later.

~

But as it turns out,  _ later _ would not come for a while after that.

-

Clint recovers after a few days of Kate and Bucky hovering over him worriedly. A month or so passes, with little discussion of  _ later _ . Clint is patient, but also nervous. Who knows how long Barney’s offer lasts, or if Bucky would be able to go with it when it comes to it. Clint knows that people have fled the country because of the accords before, and is sure they could do it with proper preparation and planning, but it’s clear that something else is bothering Bucky.  _ You don’t know what I’ve done  _ is what he had said. Clint really didn’t, and doesn’t really have a guess either. That metal arm, his weapons knowledge, and tendency to act strange. Clint had even noticed in the last few weeks that Bucky seemed to be able to speak, or at least understand, countless languages. He watches Kate and Clint sign to each other but never speaks up about it, or laughs at something playing on the tv in Clint’s spanish neighbor’s room.

He doesn’t ask because it doesn’t worry him yet, and also because Bucky clearly isn’t comfortable talking about it. Doesn’t mean Clint isn’t a little curious when Bucky swears in a language that sounds slavic, or when Bucky hit his head on the bed frame and seemingly was only able to speak in Romanian for the remainder of the day.

Lucky is tired and panting by the time he reaches the top of the stairs before Clint, moving to sit in front of the door so he can be let in. Clint is saying something unimportant to the dog, reaching the top and turning towards his door, stopping in his tracks when he spots Nick Fury standing menacingly in front of his door.

“I, uh, wasn’t expecting company,” says Clint, finally moving forward and unlocking his door. Clint doesn’t doubt that Fury probably could’ve gotten in himself, but decided to wait for some reason. He’s also lying, he figured Bucky would be coming over in a few hours after his fight. But if Fury is here… Clint tries to steady his breathing.

Fury apparently has nothing to say to that, just follows Clint and Lucky inside.

Once the door is closed, Fury does not move any further from the entryway. “Clint Barton, you are not a very easy person to track down.”

Clint drops his keys onto the table, feeling twitchy. “When the government wants you dead, you try to cover your tracks.”

Fury clears his throat. “Funny thing about that. Bucky Barnes is currently in government custody, and is likely on death’s row.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've never written a cliffhanger, how did i do?
> 
> you tumblr is: andthwasp  
> here's the rebloggable tumblr version of this chapter: https://andthwasp.tumblr.com/post/184990385337/come-in-from-the-cold-chapter-two
> 
> -clint and bucky rolling up the carpet to dance and eating apples is a reference to richard silken's poem scheherzade, in which the narrator reflects on being in love and loving the mundane. i fell in love with this poem from another fic i once read and wanted to pay homage in this fic


	3. Let The Sunshine In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't really have any good excuse as to why this took so long to be posted, because realistically it could've been posted a few weeks ago but then life got in the way etc etc
> 
> please note the added tag for suicidal thoughts. i don't think they're anything that could be too triggering and they're not graphic at all, but if you think it could be harmful to you i'd steer clear of bucky's pov
> 
> i'm incredibly proud of this fic, and i hope you enjoy!! <3

It rains.

It rains and it rains and it rains.

The first person they try to send in gets his neck broken. The second and third have their own guns turned against them. The fourth calls out a woman’s name as his head connects with the doorframe. They don’t send any more for a while after that. 

There are no windows, but the rain can be heard loud and clear. Which means it’s close. To what, it’s unknown. The surface, if the cell is underground. Some sort of window, if it isn’t. Close to going crazy, close to escape, to a man dressed in purple, to a house.

The fifth person they send is not taken down so easily.

Dodge. Dodge. Punch, miss. Dive, go for the legs.  _ Go for my legs _ , someone had said. Jump back up, punch when he isn’t expecting—

The man goes down, does not get back up.

The Winter Soldier sits on the floor, and does not feel like he has won.

-

When Clint was a kid, he and Barney used to play a game.

It was like hide and seek. When dad gets home from the bar, you hide. When you wake up at three am and hear him yelling at mom, you seek. Clint isn’t allowed to step between Barney and dad, but can between dad and mom. Don’t talk to dad unless he talks to you first.

The rules of the game went out the window once dad hit Clint’s head too hard and they couldn’t afford hearing aids. Barney stood up for Clint when he hadn’t before, talking to dad out of turn when Clint couldn’t hear him. Shoving him roughly and telling him  _ make everything something to hit with. And hit them until they stop. _

Barney hadn’t been a good brother.

But he wasn’t a bad one, either.

So Clint picks up the phone and calls.

~

It rains well into the night, long after Nick Fury has vacated the premises with the barest promise to let Clint know if they learn anything else.

Kate arrives sometime after three am, finding Clint sitting on the floor of his living room, all of the furniture pushed up against the far wall and the carpet rolled up. Clint isn’t dancing, though. Piles of paper sit on the floor around him, all from an overflowing file that Fury had left. It mostly incomprehensible, and what Clint can actually make out doesn’t make sense. There’s a form that appears to be from the army, the name _ James Buchanan Barnes  _ at the top, and a photo showing a younger and clean cut Bucky dressed in fancy army greens. Another photo is attached to what looks like an essay written in Russian, and has Bucky in a more familiar form, with his long hair and unshaved face. He looks  _ dead, _ almost, skin tinted blue as he sits in what can only be some sort of freezer. There are other photos, of brain scans and dog tags and chairs that look like the kind of thing an evil dentist would have. Clint can’t make sense of it all. Some pages are written in English and appear to be American, while others must be Russian. 

He hadn’t been able to explain much over the phone, but she looks understanding as she toes over the papers to kneel next to Clint, who is shaking. Kate wraps her arms around him delicately, not paying any attention to her soaking wet rain coat or the papers around them. Clint presses his face into her neck and lets himself cry, her soothing hands pressed to the back of his head. For a fleeting moment, he is reminded of his mother.

“It’ll all be okay,” Kate assures him, snapping Clint out of the fog he had been in. Kate is Kate, and never anyone else. She presses their foreheads together, her wet hair falling into Clint’s face. “We’ll figure it out.”

“We’re calling in the reinforcements,” someone says. Clint’s head snaps up, looking over Kate’s shoulder to see a tall, blonde man standing awkwardly in the doorway. He looks sheepishly between Clint and Kate, like he feels bad for ruining their moment. “Uh, sorry.”

It dawns on Clint exactly who this is. “Katie, were you ever going to tell me that you know Captain America?”

Kate’s hand, which has moved to Clint’s shoulder, tightens its grip. “I ran into him in the stairwell. So somehow  _ he _ knows where you live.”

Captain America shuffles. He is not at all like the warrior Clint has been picturing. He seems awkward, and carries himself like he isn’t totally sure what to do with his body.  _ Steve _ is what Bucky had called him. His best friend.

“Bucky told you,” Clint realizes after a beat of silence while Steve searches for his words.

“For emergencies!” Steve hurries out. “I think this is as  _ emergency _ as it gets.”

Clint presses both of his hands to the wood floor, trying to steady himself. Kate lowers herself so she is sitting beside him, shrugging off her coat and tossing it to the couch a few feet away. She remains close to Clint, their knees and shoulders bumping. Her worried eyes connect with Clint’s as she cuts off Steve’s continued awkward and panicked rambling. “The Captain said that he can help.”

Somewhere between the stairs and Clint’s apartment Kate and Steve had realized who the other was and were planning something. “Reinforcements,” Clint echoes from earlier.

Steve presses forward until he stands at the edge of the circle of papers that Clint has made, glancing over them. He doesn’t look surprised at what he sees. It makes Clint wonder how much of this Steve understands. “We, some of the other fighters and I, can help.”

“I don’t understand.”

Steve crouches down and picks up a few of the papers, looking over them. “Has Bucky told you anything? About his past.”

Clint shakes his head.

“I don’t believe the government, or whoever has Bucky, is planning on killing him anytime soon.”

“But Fury said—”

“Fury is holding his cards close to his chest,” Steve says, passing a paper over to Kate, who holds it in front of both of them. The paper has clearly been kept over years, maybe decades, the edges folding in and the page turning brown instead of white. That’s not what surprises Clint, as most of the papers around them are older than Kate. The page contains a list of some sort, a straight line of black going down the page next to a seperate list of years. The only thing besides the years that isn’t blacked out is one name at the bottom.  _ James Buchanan Barnes _ sits next to the years  _ 1963-2010. _ “You’ve heard of the Winter Soldier.”

“That’s Bucky,” Kate says.

Clint looks up. “There were—”

“Others,” Steve finishes, nodding. “Before Bucky. But he was the best.”

“The best at  _ what?” _ asks Kate, practically reading Clint’s mind.

“The Winter Soldier was an assassin for a nazi organization called Hydra,” Steve explains delicately, sorting through all of the papers closest to him. He appears to know what they all mean. “Hydra got its start in the second World War, and like an infection, it continued to grow even after. They lurked in the shadows and started to gain a cult-like following. Bucky joined the army in ‘61, and well, died during a mission in ‘62. But he hadn't, not in the way it counts. He had been taken into captivity by Hydra and became a brainwashed killing machine who didn’t even know his own name.”

“How is that possible—” Kate starts.

“Bucky hadn’t been the first Winter Soldier, but he was the last. Up until then no other Winter Soldier had acted positively to the serum, or finished the training, or died not too long after they started active duty. But Bucky lasted. For forty seven years.”

“Wait,” Clint chokes out, but Steve continues.

“When they found my body in 2008, I joined SHIELD as Captain America and became an agent. I helped take down Hydra, saved Bucky, and then SHIELD shut down, never to be heard from again.”

They must be wearing twin faces of shock. Kate speaks first while Clint tries not to hyperventilate. “You’re the  _ real _ Captain America? The one from those war posters in the 60s?”

“Yes.”

Kate presses a hand to her forehead.  _ “Jesus Christ.” _

This explains everything that was odd about Bucky, Clint thinks. The arm, the languages. His off days where it’s like he accidentally entered factory reset mode. For nearly fifty years, Bucky had been nothing more than a machine, an asset. Now, he was out of his time, his brain working like a fork in a blender, and was in an underground fighting ring because he had no other options.  _ I don’t even technically exist,  _ he had said. And then,  _ you don’t know what I’ve done. _

And now he’s gone.

Clint, suddenly steady and sober, stares at Steve. “You said you don’t think they want to kill him. What does any of this have to do with that?”

Steve manages to hold his gaze. “Hydra wouldn’t kill their greatest weapon.”

Beside Clint, Kate startles, leaning forward. “You’re not saying—”

“I believe Hydra has infiltrated the government, and is very likely the root of the accords.”

~

Steve leaves at 5am and promises to return in a few hours. He doesn’t explain where he is going.

Clint has about as much faith in him as he does with Nick Fury at this point, but lets him leave all the same. What more could he lose?

He looks warily at Kate over his coffee. She looks more put together than he does, and that’s saying something. Her hair sits high on her head in a sloppy bun, likely still wet from the rain, and makeup is smeared down her face. It looks like she’s wearing pajamas, with sweatpants tucked into her rain boots and a t-shirt she probably stole from Clint.

“I’m sorry for dragging you into this,” Clint whispers after a long stretch of silence.

Kate frowns at him. “Don’t be sorry, dumbass.”

“I just—“

“You didn’t  _ just  _ anything, okay?” Kate reaches across the table and grabs his hand. “I’ve got your back and you’ve got mine, right Hawkeye?”

Clint sniffs, looking down at their hands. His chest tightens and constricts. “I don’t know what we’re getting into, here.” Steve talked of  _ reinforcements  _ and  _ Hydra  _ with some sort of optimism, like the fight isn’t over yet.

Like there’s still hope.

“It’s not like we did back then, either,” says Kate. “I didn’t expect to become your sidekick when you broke into my house.”

“You’re not my sidekick, Katie.”

She looks away, her gaze far off. “You got that right.”

More silence falls. Clint tries to keep his shit together, forcing himself to drink more coffee. Kate leaves the kitchen to take Lucky outside as the clock on the microwave approaches 6am.

She returns, hair once again wet and drooping sadly to one side of her head. Lucky shakes the water off right next to Clint, then wanders back into the living room to go back to sleep on the couch that is still pressed up against the wall. Clint is reading Barney’s letter again.

“I wouldn’t mind, you know.”

Clint looks up as she sits down, shedding her coat once more. Kate motions to the letter. “You could leave. I wouldn’t mind.”

He stares at her. “ _ I _ would mind.” Clint couldn’t imagine a world where he didn’t see Katie every day. He needs her to tell him when he’s being stupid, or take care of him when he’s sick. No one makes mac n’ cheese quite like she does, or rolls their eyes so hard it must give them a headache. No one to hold his hand or hug him in exactly the right way or share his bed after long nights. The only other person who could ever come close won’t be coming home anytime soon.

“You deserve to be somewhere with Bucky where you can both exist. You have the opportunity, don’t you want to go before it’s too late?”

“It’s already too late.”

“You heard what Steve said!”

Clint rubs his face, releasing a breath that sends a shake through his body. The truth is that he doesn’t want to get his hopes up. What if they do something, something  _ crazy  _ and  _ stupid  _ and definitely  _ illegal _ and Clint spends the rest of his sad life in a prison, or worse. All for a ghost.

But doesn’t Bucky deserve that? The fighting chance? The  _ what if? _

Clint doesn’t even know how long it’s been since Bucky was taken into custody. Had Fury waited? Or was Clint the first to get the news? There were too many variables, none of it made sense—

“What if I don’t deserve it?” asks Clint after a while. Kate’s face softens as she lifts herself from the chair and rounds the table, wrapping her arms around Clint’s shoulders.

“You, Clint Barton,” she whispers to his hair, “deserve a happy ending most of all.”

~

By 11am, Steve still has not returned. Clint paces worriedly around the apartment, takes two showers, digs through the duffel bag holding all of their supplies, takes out his hearing aids, and sits stock still in the middle of all of Bucky’s papers. Knowing what he now knows about the Winter Soldier, some things click into place. There’s a pack of papers connected by a ring at the corner that’s just full of names and dates, a few censored here and there. Victims, Clint realizes, enemies of Hydra that the Winter Soldier targeted. There are thousands of names.

Clint’s stomach stirs uncomfortably. He sets the packet down and moves to stand, feeling ready for this third shower, when Kate, sitting on the couch, looks over at the front door. Clint follows her gaze, but doesn’t see anything. He looks back over at her as she signs  _ wait, _ her palms up towards her and fingers wiggling. She is up and moving to the door before Clint can respond.

As she opens the door Clint lets himself slide back onto the floor, his feet tucked underneath him. Kate is stepping back and letting Steve in quickly, followed by two women. Kate is talking hurriedly to them, her mouth moving too quickly to read and her eyes looking between their new arrivals. Clint looks back down at the papers, too tired to get up and sort things out.

A pillow hits the side of his head. When he looks up, Kate is looking at him expectantly, Steve looks awkward, and the women are hard to read. Tall dark and beautiful has her arms folded and a blank expression on her face. The second, with defined muscles and big curly hair, looks like she’s judging Clint. Kate, looking small between the two women, runs her pointer finger across her forehead then places her right hand over her left and wiggles her fingers. After a pause and a glance to the second woman, she slots her fingers together and keeps her thumbs pointed up, moving her hands around in a circle.

Ah. So Steve really had called in the reinforcements, whatever that means. Clint was having a hard time keeping up.

The Black Widow says something, and Miss America begins to respond, but Kate cuts her off and starts to rattle on about whatever it is.

Clint lets out a long exhale, stands, carefully steps over all of the papers, pushes past Steve, heading into the bathroom.

His head hurts.

~

His heart hurts.

This is what’s on his mind after the third shower, staring at his reflection in the cracked mirror. His blonde hair is disheveled despite being fresh from a shower, and his eyes are red and rimmed with heavy bags. It’s been less than twenty four hour since he’s seen Fury, but it feels like several lifetimes. From finding out that your sort-of boyfriend is as good as dead, to hearing that he used to work for a nazi organization and grew up in the 50s, everything was starting to pile up on Clint’s shoulders.

Clint was starting to feel very, very overwhelmed.

There was hope, supposedly, for Bucky. Steve seemed to think so.

What had Barney said, when they were kids?

_ Make everything something to hit with, and hit them until they stop. _

Clint lets out a long sigh, slipping in his hearing aids and pulling on a t-shirt and sweatpants that don’t fit him right, but are better than nothing.

“Alright,” Clint says as he enter the kitchen. Kate pauses mid coffee pour, her eyebrows raising and disappearing behind her bangs. She scrambles as the mug overflows and spills onto the table, swearing loudly. “How are we doing this?”

-

It can’t tell exactly how much time passes.

Sometimes they say the words, sometimes they don’t.

Either way, everything is foggy. It fades in and out, having lost the energy to fight long ago. There are flashes of, of  _ things _ , of people and places and sounds. A dark and old apartment filled with nothing except a mattress and some boxes fades into a pleasant living room with pictures of fuzzy faces and a tv that just shows static, a low voice saying something about  _ dancing _ and  _ arrows  _ and  _ haircuts. _

It shakes its head, trying to clear its brain of the fog, the concrete floor coming into focus for a moment underneath it before turning into an ugly green carpet that smells like rosemary and home. This time a woman’s voice is singing something high and sweet that makes it long to crawl into her arms and fall asleep.

It screams, loud enough that it pulls it out of the mist, banging the metal fist onto the floor. It screams so loud that it is sure someone will come to shut it up, to put a bullet in its head to get it over with.

But no one does.

~

There is a time when they try to activate The Asset, but when they say the words, all it can do is bring two fingers to its chin and make a motion pulling them down and away from its face until they inject something that forces it back into the fog.

~

Bucky thinks a lot about the choices he’s made up to this point.

There was a walk home, from,  _ somewhere, _ he doesn’t remember. An alleyway, a man with a badge and a uniform and a gun that didn’t fire real bullets. Someone in a pristine lab coat saying the words, but, no, _ that doesn’t make sense, Hydra went down in— _

You spend the better part of your life double and triple checking locks, looking underneath beds, taking the long way home, and obsessively honing your self defense skills, and where does that get you?

He’s clearly in a cell of some sort, but whether or not this is the sort of treatment that enhanced people usually get upon arrest is unclear. Instead of bars there is a heavy metal door, and there is no window or bed. All he has is the light in the ceiling and the occasional grunt that comes through the door. He’s pretty sure he had killed the first few people they sent in, but he had been in full Winter Soldier mode, so he’s not totally sure. Whoever had activated him hadn’t known how to turn it off, so he spent some time in an odd state of limbo where he was activated with no purpose, turning him into a foggy mess that didn’t know who to kill or who to trust. Eventually he ran out of steam and they started trying different things on him, like saying the code words and injecting him with something that makes him become loose and pliant, or, once, knocks him straight out.

He wishes they’d just kill him already. Isn’t that what they do to enhanced anyway?

Whoever is running this operation clearly doesn’t understand how the Winter Soldier works. They’re trying to figure that out, what gets him going and what stops it, and just what his limits are. Why had he been arrested just to become a test subject, left to practically rot away in this fucking cell? Or why hasn’t he been killed?

Bucky thumps his head uselessly against the door. He wonders if anyone outside it can hear him.

He shouldn’t have joined the  _ fucking _ army.

-

Natasha Romanov takes her coffee black. America Chavez likes hers with only a little milk and cinnamon. Kate, per usual, makes hers with lots of milk and sugar. Steve Rogers does not drink coffee, but somehow finds bags of tea hidden in Clint’s cupboards and drinks that instead.

They all manage to fit in Clint’s kitchen. Kate, America, Steve, and Natasha at the table and Clint on the counter, Lucky underneath the table at Kate’s feet. They’re going on thirty hours of whatever it is they’re doing, talking, planning,  _ something.  _ They walk back and forth between the kitchen and the living room every once in a while, looking for something, anything, they can use to figure out exactly what it is that they’re going to do.

Steve explains that he had to visit the facility and steal some files, which is how he figured out how to contact Natasha and America.

“Fury doesn’t know you’re here?” asks Kate.

He takes a long sip of his tea and shakes his head. Steve looks over at Clint on the counter, then says, “I worry that he wouldn’t think it would be worth it. This isn’t the first fighter that’s been arrested, and it will hardly be the last.”

Clint forces himself to look up at the ceiling rather than at Steve’s sad face. Seventy five arrow holes in the kitchen, and twenty two are on the ceiling. He counts them now, each one a tap on the counter.

_ One, two, three, four… _

“There’s not much we can do without the resources at the facility,” Natasha points out. “The combined forces of Stark’s tech and Fury’s information would do us wonders.”

America wanders out of her chair, bringing her mug with her into the living room. “I don’t get how Fury got our information.  _ I  _ certainly didn’t give it to him.” She moves along the edge of papers that Clint has created. They’ve hardly made a dent, even if they’ve already moved a decent amount of papers into the room. Pages that appear to be health updates with locations blacked out, or army files that declare Sergeant James Barnes KIA.

“Why don’t we just get in and get into Stark’s shit then?” Kate keeps her eyes on America through the doorway, her hands nervously fiddling with her own mug.

_...fifteen, sixteen, seventeen... _

“You’ve seen the security at the damn place, it’s nearly impossible to get in without being detected, much less get in  _ and _ get out undetected,” Natasha says plainly, as if it’s obvious.

_...nineteen, twenty, twenty one… _

“There are twenty two points of entry, fifteen exits,” America calls from the living room. “I don’t see why we can’t shut a few down for a little while.”

Clint looks away from the ceiling, over at Kate. She’s looking back at him, and without missing a beat, raises a hand to point at him, then moves her hand down away from her chin. He just nods, hopping off the counter and moving into the living room, where America is crouched over one of the pages.

“There’s nothing we can do that Stark wouldn’t notice immediately,” says Steve.

There’s a paper that America is holding. Every single word is censored, except for a single photo in the top right corner of an empty street.

“Why don’t we just ask him?”

Clint can practically hear all of the heads turning towards him. Steve starts, “Ask—”

“Stark.”

Heavy silence. Lucky’s panting fills it. Then,

“That could—”

“He wouldn’t—”

Steve and Natasha start to talk over each other, Steve adamantly refusing to believe that Tony would help while Natasha makes a case for Clint. America looks over at Clint and gives him a lopsided smile. “They’ll never give in to each other, they’re both too stubborn.”

Clint thinks back to the time he watched Captain America tapout during a fight with Black Widow. “I’m not so sure.”

The paper America was holding lands back on top of something about a man named  _ Helmut Zemo.  _ Clint’s looked at it already, anyway.

“Stark seems like the type of guy who would get a kick out of helping our wayward cause,” Clint continues, moving back into the kitchen and taking the seat that America has abandoned. He takes a drink from Kate’s cup even if he prefers his coffee black. He’s starting to feel like he needs a nap. A nap and a house far, far away from Bed Stuy. “So, why don’t we just  _ ask him. _ Walk right up to that tower of his, knock on the door, and ask.”

Waving a hand, Kate comes to his defense. “He has a point.”

Natasha raises her eyebrows smugly at Steve. He looks at her for a long minute, some sort of internal turmoil, before he dips his head and says, “fine.”

From inside the living room, America tosses a fist in the air. “Now we’re cooking.”

And with that, Clint stands, leaving the kitchen, walking through the living room, and retreating to his lonely room. He doesn’t need to look to know Lucky has followed, jumping onto the bed and looking up at Clint sadly, as if he is wondering where their third party is.

Clint crouches at the edge of the bed where Lucky lies, his one eye trained on Clint. He runs a hand through Lucky’s fur and rubs behind his ear, his tongue falling out the side of his mouth with a low huff. “I miss him, too,” Clint whispers. He feels like crying but can’t, his body tired of it. Lucky sits up enough press his nose into Clint’s eye, then his tongue against his cheek, as if sensing the imaginary tears that are falling. “We’ll get him back,” Clint promises, to Lucky and to himself, petting the dog once more before removing his hearing aids and crawling into bed, wondering if it truly smells like Bucky, or if he is imagining it.

When Kate slips in beside him, sometime later, Clint realizes that he couldn’t live without Bucky as much as he could not live without Kate.

~

Clint is sitting on a roof somewhere, a younger, clean cut Bucky Barnes beside him. His hair is cut to army regulation but still styled immaculately, and is donned in the same fancy greens Clint had seen in the picture earlier, but the sniper rifle in his hands suggests that he’s in combat . When Clint looks down he sees his bow in his hands, a single arrow sitting innocently on the ledge of the building that they are on.

There’s a cityscape in front of them, but it fades in and out, too hard to make out any details.

_ “Where are we?”  _ asks Clint, his voice sounding muted and warbled, even in his own head. The young Bucky beside him looks through the scope on his rifle.

_ “A mission, of course.” _ He certainly sounds like the Bucky that Clint knows, but there is a smirk in his voice, a hint of playfulness and youth.  _ “Didn’t you read my file?” _

Clint startles, grabbing the arrow from the ledge and looking over the edge of the building. Something finally comes into focus, a single door on a building across the street. There are no people on the foggy streets, no one to enter the building and no one to leave it. When Clint looks over at Bucky, he is no longer looking through the rifle and is instead sitting back, his feet kicked up with his arms raised behind his head, all too relaxed.

_ “A mission,”  _ Clint repeats. With one arrow?  _ “I don’t—” _

_ “Hush,”  _ says Bucky suddenly, sitting up and looking through the scope. Clint looks too, then stands suddenly, shocked at what he sees.

Bucky, the version that Clint knows with long hair and a scruffy face and a metal arm, walks out of the building. He’s nearly moving in slow motion, face blank as he moves forward. He’s dressed all in black, with weapons strapped across his body, and Clint realizes that he’s looking at the Winter Soldier.

Young Bucky pulls Clint back down by his sleeve.  _ “You’ll blow our cover,”  _ he hisses, face twisted into something angry and unrecognizable.  _ “Aren’t you going to take the shot?” _

Clint means to grab at Young Bucky’s shoulder, but his hand goes right through him.  _ “I can’t,”  _ Clint pleads, looking into the cold blue eyes of the young man that Clint doesn’t know at all.  _ “He’s still in there.”  _ Bucky rolls his eyes, huffing and lifting his rifle.

_ “Fine, I’ll do it,” _ he mutters, looking down the scope just for a moment before pulling the trigger.

There is a shot that rings through the air and Clint shouts, throwing out his arm, but he is falling suddenly, over the edge and away from the Bucky that Clint doesn’t know.

He wakes up before he can hit the ground.

~

For a moment Clint just feels someone beside him, and wonders if the last day and a half have been a dream. But Kate’s hair is longer and darker than Bucky’s, splayed out on the pillow beside her head. Lucky is sitting patiently by the door, looking back and forth between the bed and the door, his mouth hanging open.

Clint lets out a long breath that he didn’t know he had been holding, his heart beat steadying into something that makes it easier for him to set his feet on the carpet, put his hearing aids in, and open the door. It’s only once Lucky is rushing out of the bedroom and to the front door that Clint notices the sound of incessant knocking.

It’s hard to say how much time has passed since Clint abandoned the others for his bedroom, but sunlight is spilling through the curtains when it had been dark when he fell asleep, so something tells him it hasn’t been an absurdly long time. Natasha and America being sprawled over the furniture that's crowded together adds to the theory. Steve is nowhere to be seen.

“Wha—”

Tony Stark is already rambling as he steps through the open door and around Clint. “About damn time,” Tony is saying, carrying a cardboard box filled with electronics, “I’ve been knocking for, what, ten minutes?”

“You know I’m deaf right—”

“And at this time of day, no less” he continues, stepping into the kitchen and setting the box on the table. “This isn’t usually the sort of thing I’d do but Stars and Stripes put on his puppy face begged for my assistance.”

Clint stares at Tony. He hadn’t  _ really _ expected him to be on their side, much less randomly show up to his apartment. “Where’s Steve?” asks Clint skeptically.

Tony waves a hand, pulling out a device that looks like a miniature satellite. “Has to check in with some official government people every morning since he’s on the enhanced list.”

“So that's where he went yesterday morning. He wasn’t just getting…” Clint pauses, looking awkwardly at Tony. “Things.”

“I am well aware that the star spangled man with a plan snuck into the facility.” Clint doesn’t get the reference, but Tony is continuing before he can even ask. “That man doesn’t have an ounce of stealth in that ridiculous body.”

The sound of Tony taking everything out of the box and rambling on about Steve  _ taking what doesn’t belong to him _ finally wake someone else up, a disheveled Natasha stepping into the kitchen. She takes one look at Stark, heaves a long sigh, then moves to the counter to begin making more coffee. “You miss me, Miss Romanov?” Tony says, raising his eyebrows at her back. Clint takes the seat next to Tony, glancing over all of the equipment he has taken out. Several computers, the thing that’s shaped like a satellite, and a pile of things that just look like junk to Clint.

“Do you think you can find him?” asks Clint.

Shrugging, Tony grabs a cord from one of the computers and reaches around Natasha to plug it in next to the coffee machine. She glares at him as he responds, “Not sure. We tried to put a tracker in that arm of his forever ago, but he destroyed it as soon as he was out of my sight. He would never be found if he didn’t want to.”

Clint thinks back to that first night they met, when he had found one of the fifteen exits from the facility and Bucky had stopped to question him. They had fumbled around each other, neither one of them knowing exactly what to do. Bucky had been pissed off and worried that Clint was going to turn him in, and Clint had been afraid and flustered.

That was months ago.

_ Look at us now,  _ Clint thinks, rubbing his forehead and glancing over at Tony. Nothing remains of Bucky in the apartment, nothing except that stupid fucking file. No pictures, because Bucky refused to take them. No notes, no traces, nothing to be found, just like Tony says.

“Is it a lost cause?”

Stark looks up, studying Clint. He takes him in, the whole mess of him. Clint can’t tell if there is pity hidden in his gaze.

“Be honest,” continues Clint.

He rubs his facial hair, glancing back down at his unfinished computer setup, then up at the ceiling, before Tony finally settles on Clint again. Over his shoulder, Natasha’s eyes flick around Tony’s person, the shoulders, his hands and feet, analyzing his body language. Finally, Tony says, “I think I can find him. Whether or not he’ll be sane isn’t something I can guarantee.”

That’s enough for Clint. Hope, something he had been trying to shove away, starts to bubble in his chest. Tony Stark, of all people, was giving him  _ hope. _

Clint leans back in his chair, letting the feeling settle and his shoulders loosen. Tony was going to find Bucky, they were going to come up with a plan. And then what?

Barney didn’t answer the phone when Clint called hours ago, and had not called back. Clint hadn’t left a message, either, but he didn’t even know what to say. There was promise of a house, a haven far away from New York. Big open fields for Lucky, places for targets for him and Kate. A home for Bucky where he would never have to worry about what may be hiding around the corner. “I’ll be right back,” Clint mutters while Tony takes a breath from talking to Natasha as she sits down. He can feel her careful gaze on him as he reenters the living room and goes back into his bedroom.

Kate is still asleep. He doesn’t bother waking her as he sits on the edge of the bed, digging around the blankets and looking for his cell phone. It’s nearly dead, so he plugs it into the wall and leans in close as he punches in the numbers he has memorized at this point.

It rings for a few seconds. Clint’s leg bounces nervously.

_ “Y’ello?” _

Pause. Clint didn’t think he’d get this far.

“Barney?”

_ “...Clint?” _

He has to mentally slap himself. “Yeah, yeah it’s me. I called earlier, but…”

_ “Jesus Christ Clint, what time is it over there?” _

Clint glances at the clock. 6:38am. “Early. Been a long few days.”

There’s some noise on the other side of the phone, like a gust of wind is blowing past Barney. It’s loud, enough so that it makes Clint pull his ear away from the phone for a moment.

_ “Sorry ‘bout that,”  _ says Barney. He doesn’t sound sorry, but continues,  _ “so are you calling me this early in the morning just to say hi?” _

Clint rolls his eyes. “You know why I’m calling.”

_ “No need to get snarky. You’re talking to your brother for the first time in years and this is the thanks I get?” _

“Barney, please. I told you I’ve had a long few days.”

Another stretch of silence. More wind hits Barney’s phone, but nothing loud enough to hurt. He finally says,  _ “well, it’s like I said. It’s yours if you want it.” _

He wants it. So desperately, so much that he can feel it in his bones. Clint grabs a fistful of the blanket and closes his eyes, trying to ground himself. If they can just get Bucky, Stark could figure out how to get them there—

“I need some details, first.”

_ “Three bedrooms, two baths, two floors. A basement for… storage, if you need that. A barn full of junk. All furnished, mostly old stuff that we found for sale around the area. In Ireland, on land built for farming, though I can’t imagine that interests you or your lady.” _

Clint looks over at where Kate is on the bed, one arm tossed over her eyes and the other outstretched towards him. He delicately picks up her hand as Barney tells him all about the place they could run away to. She doesn’t want that, he recalls, and sucks in a tight breath. He, Bucky, and Lucky, in a farmhouse in Ireland, both of them away from their best friends.

“She won’t be coming,” says Clint, can practically feel the sadness dripping in his voice. She has a life here, in school, with friends and America Chavez.

_ “Bad breakup making you wanna run away?” _

“What? No! She’s my best friend, and she has a life outside of me.”

_ “Doesn’t matter to me. So, I’ll mail you the address—” _

“There’s not really time for that. If this all goes well, I’ll be there in a few days.”

Another sound on Barney’s end, not wind this time, and not very loud. Clint suspects that Barney accidentally knocked something over.  _ “What the fuck are you getting yourself into?” _

“I’ll explain another time.”

_ “Does this have anything to do with work?” _

“No. Well, maybe. In a roundabout way.”

Barney sounds a little out of breath, his voice louder and probably closer to the receiver.  _ “I swear to God, Clint, be careful.”  _ That wasn’t how he expected the sentence to end, but Barney is continuing before Clint can get a word in.  _ “I’m a shitty brother but that doesn't mean I want you  _ dead.  _ Do you know what you’re getting into?” _

“Careful, Barn.”

_ “Do you?”  _ Barney says, more forceful this time. 

Does he? Clint doesn’t know. Tony’s working on locating Bucky. Where they go from there is to be determined. He’s holding on to that hope, that they can figure this out, and maybe live to tell the tale. “It’s like, ah, hide and seek,” Clint breathes. “We’re seeking, right now. Hiding is... well, it’s somewhere down the line.”

For as stupid as Clint once considered Barney, he seems to understand.  _ “Don’t hit so hard that it becomes an issue.” _

“I’m going to try not to.”

After a few seconds, Barney questions,  _ “is it worth it, Clint?” _

Clint answers without hesitation. “Yes.”

_ “Well then, I’ll take your word for it. You got an email or something? I can figure out how to get that address to you without… You know.” _

He lists off an email that he stopped checking years ago, the hope that had been sitting in his chest shifting into something more like  _ desire _ . Clint is no longer just hoping for the best— action is settling into his bones and muscles and blood, ready to do this, whatever  _ this _ is.

_ “I gotta go, Clint.” _

“Alright.”

Barney hesitates, says,  _ “good luck,”  _ and hangs up.

That checks out with how he remembers Barney. Clint exhales, setting his phone on the nightstand and shifting so he lies next to Kate. Her arm is resting across her chest and her eyes are open, trained on the ceiling. Their hands are still linked. His hands are big and scarred, while hers are thin and delicate, the nails painted purple.

“Did you hear very much?”

Kate stares up at the ceiling, waving a hand. “A little.” She sniffs, finally rolling onto her side to look at him. “Enough.”

The silence that settles between them is comfortable, but can hardly be considered silence. Tony can be heard talking in the other room, occasionally America, apparently awake, or Natasha butting in. 

“I’ll miss you,” Kate says lightly, blue eyes searching Clint’s face.

“I’m not…” Clint means to finish with  _ leaving yet, _ but he chokes on his words. Clearing his throat and knocking their foreheads together, he whispers instead, “I don’t want to leave you.”

“You’re running away from this stupid country with the guy you’re head over heels for, you shouldn’t be thinking of me.” Her voice doesn’t waver as she says it, but for a moment Clint can see through the chinks in her well built armour, the way her eyes flicker with worry and her lips pressing firmly together.

“You know I love you, right Katie?” It’s not the first time he’s ever said it, not by a long shot, but he feels the need to remind her, suddenly.

Kate reaches forward with her left hand, the one not holding Clint’s, brushing back his hair with a delicate touch. “If you love something, let it go, right?”

Clint scoffs through a smile, pressing his hand into her face and twisting so he’s on his back, looking up at the ceiling. Kate shifts beside him, leaning her head on his shoulder. Their hands do not separate even once.

Sixteen arrow holes in the ceiling. He doesn’t bother counting them.

“For what it’s worth, I love you too.”

It’s worth everything.

He has nothing to say to that, so they slip into quiet once more. Clint thinks of the Bucky shaped hole in his heart, of the love that was, is, blossoming there, and where they will go after this whole thing blows over, assuming it does.  _ When _ they find where Bucky is being kept,  _ when _ they come up with a plan,  _ when  _ they break him out of there, when, when, when…

Just as Clint starts to think in  _ if,  _ there is a knock at the door. Kate lifts up her head, most of her hair stuck to the side of her face. Clint busies himself with pulling the hairs away carefully as Kate calls,  _ “what?” _

Steve says something behind the door that is muffled enough for Clint not to catch it, but Kate does. She presses her hand to her forehead and closes her eyes, shouting back, “alright, we’ll be back out in a second.” Clint follows when she sits up, pressing her mouth to the back of Clint’s hand. “Stark got everything set up, time to get to work.”

Clint just nods, watching as she slips out of bed, their hands coming apart at long last. Their fingers fall away from each other without any attention or fanfare. Clint wonders if maybe there should have been.

~

They all look like shit, Clint notes once they gather in the kitchen. Tony takes up most of the table space, so Kate, Natasha, and America sit further back in their chairs with matching perplexed looks, coffee cups held close to their chests. Steve leans in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, letting Clint take a spot on the counter. What surface Tony hasn’t taken over is covered in papers that Tony and Steve have deemed important, or, rather,  _ readable, _ snippets of information slipping through the cracks here and there.

They’re going to run out of coffee soon.

“If your theory is true, that Hydra is running the government and started the accords, that still doesn’t tell us where they could have a base.” Tony rubs his forehead, looking over his computer at Steve. “Who's to say they’re not just keeping him in a police station?”

“They wouldn’t do that, not with…”  _ A dangerous weapon.  _ “Not with Bucky.”

“It’s been two days,” Natasha points out, “why are we assuming they’re even in this country?”

“Hydra wouldn’t risk getting him out of the country, not yet at least,” Steve swears, looking confident.

Clint can feel his heart beat in his ears. “It’s not like the police have a missing persons case on their hands,” he says, bitterly. “No one except us knew he existed.”

“And Hydra, apparently,” America interjects, looking pointedly at Steve from behind her mug. “We’re working off a lot of  _ assumptions,  _ maybe he’s just arrested and sitting in a jail somewhere?”

“That’s what Fury seemed to think,” Clint recalls. Fury had said something about  _ death’s row _ and  _ government custody. _ At that point, Bucky is as good as dead.

He didn’t know what was worse— the thought of Bucky arrested, a death sentence awaiting him, or having Hydra in control, turning him back into the Winter Soldier.  

“What I don’t understand,” says Kate, “is why Hydra, an organization that  _ you _ supposedly brought down,” she points at Steve, not unacccusingly but not mean either, “suddenly reappears ten years later with a personal vendetta out for enhanced people.”

Steve opens his mouth, but Natasha cuts in before he can say anything. “‘Cut off one head, two more will take its place’,” she recites, ignoring everyone’s watchful gaze. “That’s Hydra’s slogan. They’re based on the principle that it’s impossible to get rid of them all.”

“Like the worst case of bedbugs you’ve ever seen,” replies Tony. Clint can’t tell how seriously he’s taking the situation.

Natasha twists in her chair to look at Steve, ignoring Tony’s comment. “Ten years ago, you wiped out  _ most _ of Hydra, when you pulled Bucky out of the brainwashing. A few years later, the accords are put in place, and SHIELD, the government organization in charge of handling the enhanced, whose poster boy is their worst enemy, and  _ his _ best friend is Hydra’s greatest weapon, goes down with the ship. Hydra, who has infiltrated our government, uses the accords to start taking down its greatest threats.”

“But that’s  _ me,”  _ Steve says, visibly confused. “I was just put on the watch list, not put in a prison or killed like they do with nearly everyone else.”

The pieces start to fall into place in Clint’s brain. “They didn’t execute or imprison Steve because they knew that he would know Bucky’s whereabouts.”

Tony stops typing, sitting straight and stock still as he stares at Clint. “Are you saying—”

“Bucky is the reason for the accords.” Clint’s voice sounds so quiet in his own head that he’s not sure anyone else hears it. There is a moment, just a millisecond for the pin to drop. Everyone runs the revelation over in their heads, and then, movement. Steve presses a hand to his face and promptly turns away and out of the room. Natasha manages to find a spot on the table for his coffee, moving swiftly after him. Tony leans back in his chair, a perplexed look gracing his features, speechless for maybe the first time ever. America presses her fingers to her temples and squeezes her eyes shut. Kate, her mouth hanging open, looks worriedly at Clint.

Clint cannot find it within himself to feel anything.

~

_ “You call that a shot?” Bucky laughs, leaning over the ledge to look down at the busy street. A group of pigeons investigate the apple slice that Clint just threw at them, pecking at it incessantly. _

_ “Oh please, that was perfect and you know it.” Clint reaches for the plate of sliced apples that sits on the ground between them, grabbing and slipping one into his mouth this time, instead of down onto the street for the pigeons. “I’d like to see you do better.” _

_ Bucky raises his eyebrows and gives Clint a sly smirk. “Pick a target, baby, I’ll hit it every time.” _

_ The smirk slips into a warm laugh as Clint shoves at his shoulder. “Shut up.” His teasing tone can’t hide the pink of his cheeks. Clint doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to that, to Bucky. Still, he leans forward and to the side a little, enough to press their shoulders together. “That brick, the one that’s lighter than all the other ones.” Clint points to the building next door, stretching his arm across Bucky’s body. Sure enough, there is a pink brick amongst dark red ones. “Think you could hit that with your eyes closed?” _

_ A scoff slips out of Bucky’s mouth, close to Clint’s ear. They’re nearly on top of each other, now, comfortable and knowing. “Obviously.” _

_ Bucky grabs one of the apple slices, breaking it in half. He holds the piece in his right hand, shifting his shoulder back and raising his arm. Clint, on his left side, hovers close, pressing his mouth to the soft bit of skin behind Bucky’s ear. He stills, arm still in the air but not stiff like he’s tense. Just unmoving. _

_ “Aren’t you going to take the shot?” Clint teases. _

_ Their lips connect in a second, Bucky’s arm lowering and wrapping around Clint’s neck, placing him nicely in the crook of his elbow. “I can’t,” Bucky jokes, pulling away for a moment to look into Clint’s eyes. Blue meets blue, warm and inviting. “Not with you there, asshole.” _

_ They both taste like apples, but that’s no surprise, mouths slipping together once again. “Fine, I’ll do it,” says Clint between their breaths, left hand moving up to Bucky’s hand that’s still holding the apple piece, reaching around him and tossing the slice without bothering to look. Bucky turns his head just as the apple connects with the pink brick and falls into a garbage can below. _

_ Bucky laughs, something high and sweet, his hand at the back of Clint’s neck pressing into his hair and bringing their mouths together once more. Clint loses himself in Bucky’s touch, in the warm hand on the back of his head and the nudge of his nose against Clint’s cheek. He throws an arm out, holding onto the ledge of the building so he does not slip any further into Bucky than he already has. _

_ Clint would not mind hitting the ground, if this is what falling feels like. _

~

New York feels oddly quiet and lonely.

It’s nearing 8am, meaning the streets will start to get busy as people begin their commute to work, but for now, there isn’t much more than a dozen cars on the street at a time and one or two people leaving buildings. 

Clint rests his elbows on the ledge, both of his legs tucked up underneath him. The rain stopped sometime while he was asleep, he thinks, leaving behind a cloudy sky and the murky sort of heat that warns of the summer to come. Nothing like summer in Bed Stuy, Clint thinks bitterly, when the air conditioning in his apartment doesn’t work and all the tenants of the building gather up here on the roof to grill food and pretend that the world isn’t falling apart around them.

Maybe he’s just being pessimistic.

He groans, loudly enough to startle a pigeon that had settled a few feet away, digging the palms of his hands into his eyes so hard he sees white spots. Clint should have known that it was too good to last. He shouldn’t have gotten so attached, he shouldn’t have kissed him, he shouldn’t have taken Bucky out for a beer, he shouldn’t have let Kate take him to the Initiative. There were so many moments, so many times where if it had stopped, they would not be where they are now. Bucky would not be in the hands of Hydra, or the government, or whoever, and Clint would not be sitting by himself on the roof of his building, thinking about this.

Yet, he wouldn’t take any of it back. Every touch, every kiss, was worth it.

“God,” Clint mutters, pulling his hands away from his face and staring up at the grey clouds, squinting and focusing on the flickering spots that remain. “This is the worst.”

“I’m sorry,” calls someone. Clint whips around, one hand going to touch a hearing aid as he stares at Steve.

“Not very many people can sneak up on me,” he says bitterly, thinking of how often Bucky did and turning back to look over the ledge. Steve must take that as an invitation to approach, stopping next to Clint but not sitting down. “Stark said you’re not stealthy.”

“Tony doesn’t know me very well.”

Clint looks up and over at Steve, raising his eyebrows. Steve returns the gaze, no pity in his eyes. He repeats, “I’m sorry.”

Sniffing, Clint wipes at his face and averts his eyes. “You lost him too.”

Steve apparently has nothing to say to that, moving on. “He doesn’t like to talk about you, you know.” Clint doesn’t. “You’re like something sacred to him.”

He’s careful with his words, saying  _ doesn’t  _ instead of  _ didn’t,  _ clinging to hope like Clint clings to their memories. Clint doesn’t know what to say to him, so lets his words settle in his brain.  _ Something sacred.  _ His mouth tastes like apples.

“But, he had said that you guys were planning on… running away together.”

Clint scoffs.  _ Hopeful _ is the word that comes to mind. They were hopeful, that they’d figure out a way to get Bucky out of the country and to Barney’s house. Hopeful and blissfully falling in love.

The ground doesn’t feel so nice.

“And Kate had said, that you’d do it, if you figured out how.”

So that’s where he’s going with this.

Clint rubs his face and speaks into his hands instead of Steve. “I don’t know how much faith I have in myself to get us there.”

“You’re not alone in this. Tony’s going to track him down, America, Nat, and I are some of the best hand to hand fighters in the Initiative that aren’t Bucky, and, well, you know Kate. You don’t need me to tell you that she has your six.”

When Clint looks over at Steve once more, his hand is extended. “What about you?” Clint asks, once he has had a moment to stare at the hand. “We make it out of this, we get Bucky and I to Europe. What do the rest of you guys do?”

Steve doesn’t lower his hand, but looks pensive before he answers. “Take down a regime, expose Hydra for everything that they are and what they’ve done to this country. Maybe go on vacation.”

With that, Clint take’s Steve’s hand, pulling himself up until they’re eye to eye. “I think we’ve earned one, Captain.”

~

It takes three days.

Clint receives an email on the second day from a user that is just a string of letters and numbers, the contents of the email just names of books, which Clint pieces together to be the coordinates for the house once he searches for them online and does some digging. Tony stays in the apartment for the most part, sending Kate or America to his tower to get something if he needs it. Steve leaves every morning and always returns around noon, ready to help Clint and Natasha sort through all of Bucky’s files. One night, the same day Barney emails, the three fighters and Tony have to go to the facility to participate in the Initiative, returning battered and bruised but with duffels and backpacks containing tactical gear, jumping back into it without another word. They found a system that works, all the way up until the point that Stark makes the call. 

Apparently Tony had been digging through the government’s data files, how he got access to  _ those _ Clint doesn’t know, when he had found a secure folder hidden in another series of folders. Natasha had left that morning with Steve, so they aren’t around when Tony finally says, “I think I found it.”

America, who was sitting beside Stark, bolts up and out of her chair so quickly that she becomes a blur of red, white, and blue, the papers on the counter going flying. Clint scrambles to catch them as Kate hurries over to Tony as well. “Found  _ what,” _ America says, leaning over Tony’s shoulder to look at the screen.

“Evidence of Hydra in the United States government, what do you think?” Tony looks up and over the computer to focus on Clint, who has very purposefully been keeping his movements to fix the papers on the counter controlled and calm. “If I can get into this, I can figure out where he is, or find someone who does, at least.”

Slowly, Clint meets his gaze. “Are you one hundred percent positive?”

_ Be honest, _ Clint had said four days ago, when Tony first arrived. He looks the same way he had then, rubbing his facial hair pensively, looking anywhere but at Clint, then settling on him. “If this file is what I think it is, and if it contains the information that I hope it will… then, yes. One hundred percent.”

Over Tony’s shoulder, Kate’s face slips into something like relief. Whether it’s for Clint or just for the fact that the whole ordeal will be over soon, he can’t tell for sure.

America nudges Tony. “Well, get at it Stark, we’re don’t exactly have a ton of time.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Steve and Nat to get back?” Kate asks, eyes moving between Tony and Clint.

“Yes, let’s.” Tony pushes his chair away from the table, stretching as he stands. “First, nap,  _ then _ I’ll expose our corrupt government and a nazi organization.” He waves a finger at Clint as he moves into the living room. “And hopefully save your boyfriend along the way.”

With that, Tony promptly walks to the couch, which is back in the middle of the room where it belongs, and crashes.

Kate lowers herself into the chair next to America, crossing one leg over the other and leaning an elbow on the table. “He’s certainly nothing like I expected him to be,” she notes.

“You get used to him,” replies America, shooting Kate a look. It’s Clint’s turn to look between them, raising his eyebrows. Catching Kate’s eye, he signs  _ cute, _ a smile tugging at his lips. She glares at him, raising her hand and pulling all of her fingers together in front of her mouth, telling him to  _ shut up.  _ Her cheeks are a suspicious shade of pink.

It’s only 8am so Clint tries to busy himself while they wait for Natasha and Steve to return. The sink is leaking again so he fixes it while Kate and America chat at the table. The sink doesn’t take very long so he takes Lucky on a walk, one of the few times he has bothered leaving the apartment, but he’s back before ten, so he sits by himself on the roof and tries not to think about Bucky.

When that doesn’t work he heads back to the apartment, Kate and America still at the table, unmoved. He walks right past them, through the living room and into his bedroom, stopping at the foot of his bed and crouching to grab the duffel bag from where it sits underneath the bed. The contents rattle as he sets it on the bed, pulling out his bow and an arrow.

He crawls on top of the unmade bed, settling on his back in the middle, face up towards the ceiling. Counting to sixteen over and over, Clint begins to lose track of time. The bow in one hand and the arrow in the other.

_ Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen… _

Clint twists his body and raises the bow, pulling back his arm holding the air, pressing uncomfortably into the mattress, taking the shot.

Seventeen arrow holes in the ceiling of the bedroom.

The arrow sticks in the ceiling, reverbing a few times before coming to a stop. Clint stares at it, sighing as he lays back down fully on the bed, lying on his stomach and shoving his face into the pillow.

Just as he begins to relax, his heartbeat slowing down and thoughts turning to a more manageable topic (whether or not he should do laundry), Kate calls his name. Rolling over and bringing his pillow with him, Clint tosses his arms across it to press it further into his face. It does a decent job at muffling the frustrated scream that falls out of his mouth.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t make him feel any better.

Slowly pulling himself up, Clint starts to feel as if he had been sleeping for twenty hours, rather than lying down and staring at the ceiling for forty minutes. He stands on the bed, pulling the arrow from the ceiling before jumping down and putting the arrow and the duffel back where they belong, under the bed.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” Natasha says as Clint steps out of the room. It takes him a moment to realize that she isn’t talking to him, but rather to Stark, who is still laying on the couch, but his eyes are open and squinting at the redhead leaning over the back and staring down at him. Steve is beside her, but isn’t looking at Tony. He talks over his shoulder to Kate in the kitchen, a slight frown gracing his features.

If they heard Clint in the bedroom they don’t say anything as he moves into the kitchen. The clock on the microwave says it’s 11:12am, so Steve and Natasha are back earlier than usual.

“Have you told them yet?” asks Clint as he grabs the bag of bread from where it sits on top of the fridge.

“Well,” America starts.

“Told us what?” Steve cuts in abruptly, bringing an end to he and Kate’s conversation.

Tony appears from behind the couch, tossing his legs over the side and standing. “Hold your horses, soldier.” He takes a long, agonizing moment to stretch, his back popping audibly. Clint puts the bread in the toaster just as Tony finishes, continuing, “I may have found some Hydra files while perusing through Government and old SHIELD files. Give me a little while to get into them, and I can hopefully find your guy in a few hours.”

The frown that Steve had been wearing slips into something akin to determination. “And you were taking a nap?” he says, mostly joking. Tony shoot him a look, stepping around him and into the kitchen. The toaster ticks away.

Natasha trails behind Tony as he steps into the kitchen and sits in his usual spot. Steve stares at her back, watching her movements carefully. She leans over Stark as he sits down and opens all of his computers, eyes trained on the screen directly in front of him. Kate huffs, standing and stepping into Clint’s space, squinting her eyes as she looks through him. There’s nothing she can’t see and doesn’t know already, so he just raises his eyebrows at her and grabs the toast when it pops up. She points at him, taps her right pointer finger to the left with a slight shake of the head, moves her thumb from underneath her chin to underneath her hand, hooks her finger and moves it away from her hand, then points at herself.  _ You cannot hide from me. _

“Yeah, yeah,” Clint mutters, stepping around her and getting into the fridge. “I know.”

Toast with jam tastes good when you’ve hardly eaten in five days.

Tony glances up at the five of them. “I’d suggest making some plans, if you haven’t already. As soon as I open this thing, I imagine it won’t be long before they figure out someone is snooping where they shouldn’t be.”

They all look at each other, as if waiting for someone to move first. Then, they’re all moving, Natasha stepping away from Tony and beginning to dig through one of the drawers. America appears next to Kate and drags her away towards the living room, followed closely by Steve. 

Clint shoves the rest of the toast into his mouth, barely tasting it as he chews and swallows. He opens the drawer closes to him, pulling out a pen and notepad. Natasha takes it when he passes it to her, looking at him, not through him like Kate did, but certainly strongly and intensely enough to make his stomach stir. When she breaks her stare, stepping around him and into the living room, he feels inclined to join.

~

By 4pm, they have a plan.

By 6, a location.

Tony finds documents detailing a complicated route to a maximum security prison in Connecticut. Google says that when the accords came into place they transferred civilian prisoners elsewhere, renovating the prison for enhanced. It was mysteriously never filled and disappeared into history, replaced instead by the more practical Raft (Clint had always believed the Raft to be a myth. Steve confirms that its existence is very, very real). There has supposedly been activity around the old prison; lights on around the area, trucks that move from the location to the city at routine times, and people decked out in gear hovering around the place. Tony matches this convoy to the one talked about in the Hydra files, used for transporting  _ The Asset. _ No one has to speak up or check the files to know that that is referring to Bucky.

From there they break, agreeing to meet at Stark Tower in an hour and a half. Kate stays with Clint, and Tony takes Lucky, promising to take good care of him in the short amount of time he will be away from them. 

Kate comes out of the bedroom donned in her purple jumpsuit, sans shoes and some clothes tossed over her shoulder, tugging at the belt around her hips, possibly fitting more snug than it had years ago. “You know, I had hoped that the first time I put this thing on it would be in better circumstances. And that maybe I’d have lost weight.”

“We’re not as spry as we used to be,” says Clint, stretching and cracking his back. He digs around in the duffel bag, finding and passing Kate her gloves. She stuffs them into the top of the suit, where her arm meets her chest, part of them poking out of the hole on her shoulder. Her hair falls across one side of her shoulder, pushed back by the purple headband. Clint feels about six years younger, for a moment, watching Kate reach around him to dig around in the bag. They’ve done this, get ready to do something heroic and dangerous, thousands of times.

“It’s probably too dark for these, right?” She holds up the purple sunglasses, the small smile she saves for Clint gracing her mouth. “What about you?”

Clint’s own pair are in her other hand. “Too dark,” he agrees, but takes them and slips them into his quiver, which sits in the bottom of the bag next to hers. They can’t take them out, not yet.

The sound of the chair beside him scraping against the floor forces him to look over at her. She pokes his chest, right at the midpoint of the arrow as it starts to point down. “Are you ready, Hawkeye?”

He meets her eye. “Are  _ you _ ready, Hawkeye?”

“Clint.”

“I don’t know, ready for what?”

“For… all of it. The fight. Seeing Bucky. Running away.”

Clint taps his hand on his thigh to keep it from shaking. “Do you think I should pack another bag, or something?”

She snorts. “A duffel bag full of pointy sticks from the paleolithic era is hardly enough to  _ run away—” _ Kate cuts herself off, exhaling and looking at the clock on the microwave. “If you see Bucky,  _ like that,  _ you know what to do. You won’t freeze?”

“No.” His voice wavers as he says it.

Kate pats his face affectionately despite the wary look on her face. “I’ll take good care of the apartment. I’ll write, or call, whatever we can do...” She stands, suddenly, stepping out of the kitchen and into the living room. When she returns, not long after, her hands are full of picture frames. A small pile of sticky notes sit on top.

Gingerly, she sets them into the bag, between their arrows and quivers. Clint stands, pulling her into his arms and pressing his mouth to the side of her face. It feels final, even though they have a few hours left.

Ten minutes later, they have t-shirts and jeans thrown over their tactical gear, Clint’s hands stuffed in his jacket pockets and the duffel bag hanging from Kate’s shoulder. The keys are in her hand as he takes one last glance around the apartment. The crack in the mirror, the remaining sticky notes on the nightstand, three hundred and twenty eight arrow holes. Old furniture that has somehow remained comfortable, and a TV that's broken too many times. “Don’t redecorate too much,” Clint chokes out as Kate locks the door behind them.

She bumps his shoulder with her own. “I told you I’ll take good care of it.”

Clint smiles at her, his first one in hours, and knows that she will.

-

A far away sound wakes Bucky up.

It’s not close, not yet, at least. But it was loud enough to startle Bucky’s well trained ears. He pulls himself up from the floor, stumbling to the door until he can steady himself by pressing his hands against it. Hair hangs in front of his eyes as he focuses on what may lie beyond the walls of this cell. Sounds,  _ loud sounds,  _ yelling, maybe,  _ or screaming? _ The haze in his mind begins to clear, his left hand scratching hard enough at the door to leave scrapes, but nothing substantial enough to get him out. He groans, shoving his shoulder against the door. There isn’t much strength left in him, it’s been a while since they’ve fed him but longer since they’ve activated him.

The screech of the metal hand on the door almost masks another sound coming from outside the door. This one is close, and repeated, over and over and over, getting louder—

Bucky takes a long, staggered step back as the familiar sound of metal creaking fills his ears, the door swinging open. It’s not one of the usual agents they send in like he expects. A small, balding man rushes in, his white labcoat stained with blood on his arms. Another explosion comes from somewhere, louder now that the door is open and close enough that the walls shakes and dust falls from the ceiling. Bucky is startled enough to not immediately attack the scientist or rush around him to the door, but barely has a chance to step forward before the man is speaking.

_ “Желание, cемнадцать—” _

A scream slips past Bucky’s mouth, his hands immediately covering his ears instead of to the neck of the scientist like he wishes he could do.  _ Not again, I’m too tired— _

_ “—oдин, tоварный вагон,”  _ finishes the scientist.

“готов соблюдать,” responds The Asset, its’ hands falling to its’ sides.

The scientist just manages to get out the word  _ kill _ before an arrow pierces his skull, his body collapsing pathetically to the floor. The Asset barely spares a glance at the body as it steps over it.

Past the doorway and in the hallway, a man stands nearly up against the wall, his arm drawn back and an arrow pointed at The Asset. Blood runs down one side of his face, soaking his blonde hair. The Asset can’t find any other external injuries, so it goes for the hands first, lunging forward to knock over the man and grab at the fingers with the metal hand.

He’s a surprisingly good fighter, though, taking The Asset by surprise. “Bucky!” he says through gritted teeth, grabbing The Asset’s flesh hand and shoving it away, rolling until he is on top, a knee pressed to The Asset’s gut. It’s only incapacitated for a moment or two, something in its brain stuttering before it can reach up and grasp the side of the man’s head, the bloodied side, digging its’ fingers into whatever it finds there. The man shouts, the hand that had been holding The Asset’s neck automatically going to grasp at it’s wrist, tugging it away until something small, purple, and bloody goes with it. The hearing aid lands on the floor a few feet away from them.

_ Kill _ echoes through The Asset’s mind as its bloodied hand moves back and around the man while he is distracted, grabbing an arrow from the quiver on his back and pulling it from the sheath.

The man takes one look at the arrow that The Asset has pulled, his eyes widening as he drops the bow and tugs out the other hearing aid just as The Asset registers the light  _ click  _ that the arrow emits before it explodes.

It doesn’t explode, it realizes, not really, but the sound it makes is so loud that The Asset’s eyes roll back into its head, hands going back to its ears as they had before,  _ why had I been doing that in the first place is Clint okay— _

The man’s face appears in The Asset’s line of sight from where it lies prone on the floor, ringing so loud in its ears that it could be vibrating. His mouth moves, but The Asset can’t hear it.  _ Kill _ uttered again, but when The Asset lifts its metal hand it makes no move to attack, lightly brushing the back of it against the man’s neck. The Asset expects him to smile, for some reason, something soft and warm and saved only for  _ him, _ but he doesn’t. Instead he grabs the bow from where he had dropped it nearby, retrieves his hearing aids, stuffing them into a pocket, then hauls The Asset up. Again, it moves to  _ kill, _ like it had been told, but it just presses two fingers to its chin, pulling them down.

He holds up the hand that is holding loosely to the bow and isn’t holding up The Asset, moving his hand up and down like he’s knocking on a door, then repeats the move that The Asset had done.  _ Yes, cute. _

_ Kill, _ The Asset tries to form the words in its mouth but can’t, and its metal hand isn’t moving like how it wants. The man isn’t paying enough attention to it as he forces them around a corner, promptly dropping The Asset and raising his bow towards something it cannot see as its head connects with the floor.

~

The next thing Bucky knows, he’s leaning against Clint’s shoulder, face pressed to his back. They’re outside, he thinks, up against a wall as Clint looks around a corner, an arrow notched but not drawn back. “Clint,” he mutters, lips pressed to the leathery fabric of Clint’s shirt. Bucky’s mouth tastes like copper and his ears are ringing, distant sounds of an alarm and yelling muffled like there is cotton stuffed in there. Despite all of that, the worst feeling is that of his head, like someone had taken a fork and had mashed to their heart’s content.  _ “Clint,” _ Bucky repeats, with more force, his bloodstained right hand pressing at Clint’s side.

Clint leans, just a little, into Bucky’s touch, but does not acknowledge his voice. The last he had known, Bucky was in a hazy Winter Soldier mode, the sonic arrow throwing him into a state of disrepair. Bucky tries to roll his head to the side, just a little, to get a better look at Clint’s face, but he’s a good few inches taller than Bucky is, so it’s a harder feat than it should be. Blood is running down the side of his head that Bucky is on, from a cut or gash that must be hidden in his blonde hair. His cheekbone is bruised, and there’s a cut on his lip, but other than that…

There’s blood, dry and crusted over on the skin behind Clint’s ear, but no familiar purple block underneath the crimson. “Oh,” Bucky groans, feeling stupid. The hand that was pressed to Clint’s side creeps up to the shoulder that Bucky isn’t leaning on. In morse, Bucky taps,  _ H-E-R-E. _

Without missing a beat, Clint’s head whips around, eyes brightening. He pushes them away from the corner, closer to the middle of the wall. “Christ,” he breathes, strong hands clutching at Bucky’s shoulders, then up to his neck and face. Bucky tries not to collapse when his grip loosens, but focuses on Clint’s slightly muffled words. “I thought I had lost you.” His voice is slightly warped, as he struggles to hear his own voice.

“I’m harder to get rid of than this,” Bucky says weakly. His throat feels like sandpaper as he speaks, and wonders if Clint can even hear him. Both of his hands hold up their thumbs, moving down and out towards Clint, then two fingers posed like a claw connecting with his fist.  _ Try hard. _

That’s enough for Clint, his shoulders hunching to lean down to press his mouth to the side of Bucky’s head. It doesn’t last long before he pulls away, and Clint’s stubble scratches the side of his face, but Bucky relishes in it. The first real,  _ loving _ touch he’s felt in… who knows how long.

Clint seems to force himself to turn away, back to where he had been before Bucky woke up. “I’m waiting for a signal from Kate or America, that’ll decide the route we take. Steve—”

_ “Steve,” _ Bucky sighs, but Clint continues without pause.

“—and Nat will meet us somewhere out there,” he motions to what looks like some sort of courtyard, agents and vehicles rushing between buildings, foolishly ignoring the wall where they hide, “to provide backup and distraction. Then... through the woods, meetup with Stark. I’ll explain once we’re there.”

Bucky doesn’t bother responding, knowing he wouldn’t hear. Instead he focuses on something else, forces his thoughts away while Clint waits for the signal.  _ Nat _ is a name he doesn’t recognize, but  _ America  _ must be referring to Miss America. And Stark, as in Tony?  _ Tony Stark? _ Helping them? He can’t imagine he and Steve ever getting along long enough for them to come up with an escape plan, yet…

Something lights up the sky above the base. It takes Bucky a moment to realize that it’s a bright, glimmering star.

Clint doesn’t have to look twice, reaching back and finding one of Bucky’s hands before breaking off into a sprint, right into the courtyard where their enemies wait. It’s not long before they stop paying attention to the giant star in the sky and instead turn their focus to the man running through them with their prisoner. Clint’s no good with just one hand, Bucky realizes, wiggling his fingers until Clint gets the hint and lets go, knocking an arrow and letting it fly, a small explosion lighting up trucks not too far away. Bucky grabs a gun from someone as they pass, remembering how to use it without a second thought as he shoots a man between the eyes. There is no satisfaction as he pulls the trigger.

They stop abruptly at a tall fence, their backs up against it as more men flood out from the east building.

“Hydra,” Clint says, loudly so both of them can hear it.

“That makes sense,” Bucky mutters, mostly to himself. He’d be dead by now, if he had been  _ actually _ arrested. Or worse, rotting away in the raft. Clint, despite the impending doom in front of them, wears a stoic expression.

This, Bucky knows, is better than both Hydra and the American government combined. They gave a valiant effort.

“Anytime now, please.” Clint’s eyes are turned up towards the prison watch towers, looking at something Bucky can’t focus on.

Bucky opens his mouth to say something, but before he can stumble through some sort of apology that Clint won’t even hear, a heavy  _ clang _ ceases most of the action in front of them. He drops his gun as he automatically raises his metal arm to catch the shield as it rikoshet’s off of the side of the closest Hydra agent’s head.

“For once I’m glad to see you throwing this.” Bucky doesn’t need to look to know Steve has landed beside them. Clint continues shooting, either ignoring Steve’s new presence or not noticing him. They fall into each other’s arms, Steve letting out a quiet  _ “Buck.” _

The stupid Captain America uniform feels like it always does, smelling like sweat and blood and smoke, feeling rough on Bucky’s face. Yet it feels soft, compared to everything else he’s felt in… however long he’s been here. Feels like how it did in the 60s during the war, how it felt when they fought on a highway, then a helicarrier, and then in a glorified boxing ring. Bucky breathes it in, relishes in the familiarness.

“Hate to interrupt boys, but you need to get moving.”

Bucky looks up at the voice behind Steve. The Black Widow is shooting at agents and the tires of cars, a gun in each hand, sparing quick glances over at them between fires.

“Nat,” Bucky realizes.

“Natasha, actually,” she muses, all too casual for the situation. Steve looks at her, pulling away but still holding Bucky steady. Natasha doesn’t look at them, even though she has the opportunity to as she reloads one of her guns. It seems intentional. “Clint, take Bucky out of here and get to the rendezvous point, we’ll meet you there.”

“He can’t hear you,” he says, wincing as Steve reaches around him to cover them with the shield. The agents or whoever they are are getting closer, and there’s only four of them, Bucky weakened and Clint without his ears. Whey they haven’t just tossed a grenade at them is anyone’s guess. “He seemed to think that this was the best route, that America had somehow—”

The fence rattles behind them. Bucky is the only one who turns and looks, startled by the glowing hands and eyes that await him. America’s face is lit up with the glow from her hands and her jacket, red lips quirked up in a smile. “Hey, soldier.”

Beside America, Kate is knocking an arrow and shooting it between the holes in the fence. One of the watchtowers explodes.

“Took you long enough,” Steve grits out. The explosion forces Clint to turn his head and look at everyone who has joined them, though he doesn’t seem surprised.

“We got a little caught up,” calls Kate. There is an ugly gash across her nose, another next to her lip. One of the metal loops in the fence breaks under America’s glowing pull, others following suit. She successfully pulls apart the fence and creates a chink large enough for them to fit through, stepping back as the light fades from her person.

_ “Vamos,” _ America hisses. Natasha is the first one in, followed by Bucky, who grabs the back of Clint’s shirt, Steve bringing up the rear, covering their six. Once past the fence they start running, apparently knowing which routes to take. There are others, following them, but Natasha and Clint tag team in taking them down, running as they shoot. The woods are thick and dark, the only light coming from the moon poking through the treetops and America’s glowing fists as she occasionally sends a blast behind them.

Bucky stumbles. Steve is quick to catch him by the shoulders, forcing him to keep moving.

There comes a point when the shooting stops, all of the lackeys dead or giving up, and the trees start to thin until they come to a clearing, slowing to a walk. A quinjet sits there, turned off and non threatening. Natasha and Steve get to it first, Clint slowing to match Bucky’s staggering pace, wrapping an arm around his waist. His expression is stony as he gets a long, good look at Bucky’s face, possibly his first since… before.

It’s enough to stop Clint in his tracks, pressing a dirty hand to the side of Bucky’s face. It feels like earlier, he thinks. But the danger has passed. At least for a little while.

Clint’s eyes are soft as he looks at Bucky. “I had…” he trails off, stuttering, mouth moving uselessly. The hand holding Bucky’s side tightens, speaking the words that Clint cannot. Bucky lets his own hands slip up to the back of Clint’s head, pulling him down and pressing their mouths together at long last.

“It’s okay,” Bucky breathes into Clint’s mouth when they separate. “I love you.”

It feels good to say it aloud, even if Bucky isn’t totally sure Clint can hear it. He repeats the words, over and over, liking the way they feel in his mouth. Like a breath of fresh air, or a weight lifted off his shoulders that had never really been a weight in the first place. A comfortable presence, a source of light in the growing darkness.

He must know, or sense it somehow. Clint is laughing, despite the situation, pulling Bucky flush against his chest into a hug. He doesn’t say anything, just presses his cold nose to the side of Bucky’s head.

It’s enough.

“Come on, kids! We’re running on borrowed time,” Tony calls from the open door to the quinjet.

They kiss once more before Bucky grab’s Clint’s bicep and hurries them into the back of the quinjet. The others are all strapped in along the walls already, Natasha and Steve on one side, Kate and America on the other. Most surprising, Lucky sits in the copilot seat beside Tony, his head tipped back and his tongue hanging out of his mouth. Clint lets go of Bucky when he steps forward, sitting down beside Kate and digging around the bag at his feet.

Lucky pants happily when Bucky rubs behind his ear. “I missed you too, buddy.”

Tony taps some buttons on his dashboard. “We got a three hour ride ahead of us, my robo-friend. You may want to get caught up.”

He’s right, Bucky hates to admit, returning to the cockpit and placing himself delicately next to Clint. His whole body aches, even the shitty seating in the quinjet feels comfortable. The jets rumble beneath them as Bucky buckles his seatbelt.

“So,” Clint starts, his head tipped to the side as he inserts a different pair of hearing aids, these ones a normal tan color. One stands out amongst the blood behind his ear. “It’s been about five days, give or take.”

“It’s felt like way more,” he confesses, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. Bucky was barely functioning for most of it.

“What did they do to you?” Kate asks.

Bucky sucks in a shaky breath. “They activated me, struggled to figure out how to turn me off… No one seemed to really know how to properly handle me.”

Steve leans forward a bit, the straps of the seatbelt constricting against his chest. “They were supposed to be moving you soon, probably to someone with more expertise. We took down most of, if not all, of the agents who knew how you worked way back when.”

“Why now?”

“We don’t know what changed, but we discovered that Hydra has been hiding in our government, poisoning it, starting the accords as a way to get to you.”

“To  _ me?” _

Natasha nods grimly. She crosses her arms and looks downward, continuing, “they must’ve wanted you to take out other enhanced. A means to an end.”

“So now what?”

“The good news is that we can use this to put an end to the accords, at least within the next few years. I have some of the Hydra files.” Tony waves a hand high enough that Bucky can see it from where they sit. “Explaining the secret underground mutant fight club might be a bit harder to work around.”

Something nudges his thigh. Bucky looks over at Clint, whose gaze is unreadable. “Tony’s taking you and I to my brother’s house. Remember? The one we talked about?”

Bucky does remember. The place where the past doesn’t matter.

His gaze falls on Steve, who nods encouragingly. “You and Clint go to Ireland, live without worry. America, Kate, and Tony are going to work on bringing down the accords with Fury, back in New York.”

“What about you?” Bucky likes to think that his voice doesn’t waver as he says it.

“Nat and I have plans… elsewhere.”

There’s something Steve isn’t saying, but he also isn’t one to lie. Bucky trusts him.

They’re finally going to get their  _ later, _ Bucky realizes, looking back over at Clint. His chest tightens at the sight of him, bloodied and bruised but smiling. There is no part of Bucky that doesn’t want to go with him, to wake up next to him every morning and waste their days together, with nothing to worry about except for a broken lightbulb, or when they need to get groceries next.

Bucky looks back at Steve, worriedly.

“I’ll be okay, Buck. It’s not the sixties, I can fend for myself these days.”

“And if you don’t think he can, rest easy knowing that I’ll keep him out of trouble,” Natasha adds, her sly smile somehow reassuring the unease settling in Bucky’s heart.

The hand on Bucky’s thigh shifts until it finds purchase in his own, their fingers intertwining. Clint looks at him like he’s worth it.

Maybe he is.

“Alright,” he starts, Clint’s mouth on his before he can even really begin.

~

The quinjet lands in what looks like a field, rolling hills surrounded by thick forests. A house sits in the middle of the peaceful land, an old barn sitting behind it. The place looks old and well-lived in, miscellaneous objects lying around on the porch and outside the barn. Bucky stands on the edge of the ramp, watching as the sun begins to creep over the trees. It’s earlier in Ireland than it is in Connecticut, and colder, yet not enough so for it to feel too bad yet.

Steve steps up from behind, squeezing Bucky’s shoulder affectionately. “You know, if someone told me sixty years ago that Bucky Barnes is settling down, I would’ve called them crazy.”

Bucky laughs lightly. “You and me both pal. And hey, you’ve got a lady of your own.”

“Miracle of miracles.”

They slot together once more, Steve’s arms wrapping around Bucky’s shoulders, his metal hand pressing at the small of Steve’s back. The hug lingers, not rushed as it had been when he first arrived in the courtyard of the Hydra prison, but they eventually pull away. “You take care of him,” says Steve. “I’ve been around him enough these past few days to know he needs you.”

Bucky steps off the ramp and onto the grass. He takes a moment to breathe in the fresh air, focusing on the feeling of the light breeze that pushes strands of his hair into his eyes. For nearly the first time in his life as Bucky Barnes, there are no towering buildings or honking cars to disturb the peace.

Kate and Clint talk a few feet away, near the wood fence and waist high grass, using a mixture of their voices and sign language, Lucky going back and forth between running around the two of them and trying to get into the house. Bucky feels a sudden sense of fondness. “I need him, too.”

Understanding, Steve nods. “I’ll write,” he promises.

Bucky takes a step, turning and walking backwards as he speaks to Steve. “Don’t do anything stupid!”

The smile on Steve’s face is golden. “How can I?” His voice is high and there is laughter bubbling beneath the surface. “You’re taking all the stupid with you!”

Conversation between Kate and Clint stops once Bucky reaches them. It doesn’t appear to be his fault, just the air of time running out. She stands on her toes, hands on either side of Clint’s head, pressing her lips to his forehead. “Your happy ending, Hawkeye.”

Clint’s hands hold onto her wrists as she settles back onto flat footing. “Now go get yours, Hawkeye.”

She smiles, up at Clint then over at Bucky. “Thank you,” Kate says earnestly. Bucky can’t tell which one of them she is referring to. “For everything.”

Lucky rushes over, licking her face when she crouches down to wrap her arms around his scruffy neck. “Good boy, good boy,” she mutters into his collar. Bucky only just catches it, meaning Clint probably didn’t.

With a final smile and a wave, she moves back up the hill, towards the quinjet where the others stand at the base of the ramp, watching. Bucky picks up the duffel bag from the ground, slinging it over his shoulder and averting his gaze. Clint takes his hand, tugging him along to follow Lucky to the porch.

“Are you worried?” Bucky asks. Clint glances over his shoulder at him, shrugging.

“No. Not anymore.”

They reach the porch and walk up the few steps, old wood creaking beneath them. Lucky waits patiently by the door.

Clint looks up and around the porch, at the peeling siding and broken light that hangs over them. Bucky looks behind him, at the quinjet as the jets start up. He feels inclined to wave, even if there are no windows they could see them from.

“Are you?”

He tears his eyes away from the quinjet as it takes off. Clint squeezes Bucky’s hand, his gaze careful and calculating.

“What?”

“Worried. Are  _ you _ worried?”

When Bucky looks back over at where the quinjet was, where they had been standing less than two minutes ago, there is nothing there to show for it.  _ Your past wouldn’t matter. _

“No,” Bucky says, and means it.

That reassures Clint, settles and straightens his shoulders. “Good. Cause that was your last chance to run for the hills. Now you have to look at this ugly mug everyday.” He gives Bucky a goofy grin, showing off his slightly crooked teeth, bruised face, and heavy stubble. Despite that, Bucky knows that he is beautiful.

“Ah, it’s not so bad.”

Clint crouches, letting go of Bucky’s hand and pulling up one of the floorboards, finding a ring of keys. “Yeah, well, I love you too.” His tone is joking but his smile tells Bucky it reigns true. He straightens, pulling out a particular key and putting it into the lock, twisting and pushing as the door creaks open. Lucky doesn’t hesitate to slip inside and explore, Clint following soon after.

The entryway is visible, stairs leading up to the second level, open doors on either wall, one leading to a living room and kitchen, the other to a bedroom. A rug on the floor, picture frames containing photos that Bucky can’t make out from where he stands. A homey, warm and welcoming place. Bucky hasn’t been in one of those since before the war, not counting Clint’s apartment, which had a sense of a  _ self made _ home, Clint and Kate adapting to the city life and crafting a place for themselves. This house was built to be a home, a real one, with a wife and kids and a dog.

Well, they have one of those things.

Clint reappears from the door to the right. “You coming?”

Pulling himself out of the fog, Bucky nods fervently. He takes a long stride forward, crossing the threshold, out of the cold and into their home, where Clint is waiting for him.

  
  


 

**.Epilogue.**

 

 

_ “We are not special. _

_ We are not crap or trash, either. _

_ We just are. _

_ We just are, and what happens just happens. _

 

_ And God says, “No, that’s not right.” _

_ Yeah, well. Whatever.  _

_ You can’t teach God anything.” _

__ —Chuck Palahniuk,  _ Fight Club _

 

Bucky wakes slowly and languidly, letting his eyes adjust to the sunlight drifting through the crack in the curtains and to the hand that is wrapped around his neck.

It’s non-threatening, of course, Clint’s left arm tossed over Bucky’s chest and his hand caressing his neck lightly, thumb resting right underneath his jaw. Their legs are pressed together and Lucky is peacefully asleep on Clint’s side, unaware of Bucky slowly pulling himself out of bed.

Clint’s hand falls limply onto the bed once Bucky retreats. He places a long kiss to the side of Clint’s head, into his blonde hair near a scar that is just beginning to heal, then leaves the bedroom, beginning his usual morning routine. Shrug on clothes, head downstairs, add a few layers as the mornings grow colder, resist the instinct to wear a glove.

The sun is just beginning to rise and the cold morning air is leaving a dewey fog over the grass.

Lucky follows him out of the house, trailing behind while Bucky circles it a few times and checks for any signs of bugging or intrusion, in bushes and in the miscellaneous objects on the porch, his tail wagging all the same. He does his own business as Bucky counts all the things in the barn, firewood and targets and tools and other various machinery, returning when Bucky moves to go inside when he finds nothing amiss.

Inside, Bucky checks the windows, cabinets, smoke alarms, chairs, and pretty much everything else he can think of, satisfied when nothing unusual turns up. He digs around in the fridge, taking a moment to look at all the things they have hanging on it. A newspaper clipping with the headline  _ ACCORDS THE RESULT OF NAZI INFULTRATION? VICE PRESIDENT PLEADS GUILTY!  _ next to a postcard with  _ Wish You Were Here! _ written over the New York skyline. It is signed  _ xoxo Kate  _ as she had once done with all of the sticky notes in Clint’s apartment (the ones that currently hang around the mirror in their bathroom), but is now accompanied by the neat signature of America Chavez. Steve and Nat write letters, but don’t disclose their location, though Bucky suspects they move around a lot, wary of the lasting effects of Hydra and the accords. Every once in a while Tony Stark calls the landline that’s connected to the wall and asks if their “tv” needs to be repaired or tuned up. Bucky always tells him no, he can do it himself, thank you.

Clint says that Tony is probably lonely, with the Initiative shut down. Bucky is inclined to agree.

A letter from Barney also hangs proudly on the fridge. A new one, written just a few weeks ago, the old one in a drawer somewhere where it will inevitably be forgotten. He details faking his death and running away from the tracksuit Draculas, living here with a woman named Simone and her kids, but moving recently after the boys grew up. He figured it was time to reconnect with his brother— but had not been anticipating a boyfriend instead of Kate. Either way, Barney signed the letter with a promise to write again.

Bucky’s not sure if he trusts Barney to follow up on that promise, but the house is nice and has felt more like  _ home  _ than the apartment he had in New York ever did.

He compensates Lucky by feeding him some leftover meatloaf and rubbing his belly affectionately, then leads them back upstairs where Clint still sleeps. He’s on his side now, his back to Bucky’s side of the bed and the window. The clock on the bedside table tells Bucky that he’s been gone for an hour and twenty eight minutes.

The routine gets shorter every day.

Carefully and quietly Bucky removes all of his layers, back down to his t-shirt and boxers again. Lucky hops up while Bucky slips back into the pleasantly warm bed, pressing his front to Clint’s back, cold nose at the nape of his neck.

“Jesus,” Clint breathes as he shudders, keeping his eyes closed but shifting so Bucky can fully wrap himself around him. “How’s the perimeter?” His voice is teasing, but mostly clouded with sleep.

“The same.” He presses his mouth close to Clint’s ear so he can hear him without the hearing aids. “Cold,” Bucky adds, his arm moving over Clint’s waist and finding his hands, the left arm moving up and under their pillows. “Autumn is almost here.”

Clint huffs, moving his head back slightly so it connects briefly with Bucky’s, then turns to look at him, their faces close. “We’ll be okay.”

_ Yeah, _ Bucky thinks, watching as Clint slips back into sleep, his eyes fluttering closed and mouth hanging open,  _ we will. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my tumblr: andthwasp  
> rebloggable version: https://andthwasp.tumblr.com/post/186146090507/come-in-from-the-cold-chapter-three-epilogue

**Author's Note:**

> -the symbols that are graffiti'd on the elevator are miles' spider-man logo, captain america's shield, and the avengers logo  
> -the song bucky listens to while fixing his arm in his apartment is "boogie woogie bugle boy" by the andrews sisters. i am not ashamed to admit that i listen to a lot of 40s music
> 
> rebloggable tumblr post: http://andthwasp.tumblr.com/post/183652224762/come-in-from-the-cold
> 
> my tumblr: andthwasp


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